Sharron Angle was down by 22,000 early votes when only the Clark and Washoe county early vote numbers were crunched. That gap is now less than 7,000 thanks to the folks in fourteen rural counties.
Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller just Tweeted these statewide early voting totals, excluding Eureka County:
Democrats: 162,774
GOP: 156,150
Other: 60,665
These totals put the Republicans down to the Democrats by just 6,624 votes statewide going into election day, illustrating what happens when you add the rural counties into the Nevada electoral equation.
These numbers must be taken with three big “ifs” in order to predict an Angle win:
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IF Angle is holding her base
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IF nonpartisans are breaking Angle’s way
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IF the GOP turns out in bigger numbers on Tuesday
Item three is no small task. In order to vault Angle into the Senate, Republicans need to overcome the Democrats’ 60,000 edge in statewide voter registration.
Looks like rural turnout is helping, though.
Update (7:34 p.m. ET): The early vote totals shown above do not include mail-in ballots, and it is being reported by Ralston that (according to his sources) the Democrats have an edge there, which he says puts them at +9,000 statewide.
The early vote rural turnout (not including mail-in ballots) was 15,489 Democrats and 28,663 Republicans, so Reid trails by about 13,000 votes there.