In Nevada, Paul Ryan Urges Early Voting One Day Before Deadline
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Steve Pope/Getty Images(RENO, Nev.) — Paul Ryan had a direct message for Nevadans on Thursday: “Early voting doesn’t end until tomorrow so don’t forget that you can get out and early vote.”
Ryan told several hundred people in this battleground state that Nevada is “crucial.”
“A handful of states are going to determine this thing,” he said at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center.
Ryan then told the crowd to talk to those in their lives who may have helped Barack Obama defeat John McCain there four years ago. It’s a theme he’s struck at many campaign stops.
“In a state where you have unemployment above 11 percent, [hope and change is] not working,” he said.
According to the Nevada Secretary of State, 533,064 votes have already been cast, which is 55 percent of the total votes cast in 2008. Of those ballots, 235,514 are from registered Democrats, 200,678 are from registered Republicans, and 96,872 are from “other.”
A Pew Research Center survey finds the race is neck-and-neck among early voters, a stark contrast with this point in 2008, when Obama led McCain by 19 points among those who had voted early.
Ryan headed to Las Vegas next, where he greeted volunteers at a campaign office. President Obama was also in Las Vegas Thursday afternoon holding a rally in front of 4,500 people on his first day back on the campaign trail after taking a break from politics to deal with the devastation of superstorm Sandy.
The president and Ryan have been circling each other on Thursday. Both stopped in Wisconsin and Colorado. The GOP vice presidential nominee began his day in his hometown of Janesville, Wis., after taking his children trick-or treating Wednesday night, then held an event in Greeley, Colo. The president was in Green Bay, Colo., where Ryan was Wednesday, and ended his day with an event in Denver Thursday evening.
Ryan will head back to Colorado on Friday, stopping in Montrose before traveling to Iowa for a campaign event in Cedar Falls, and ending the day with a joint rally with his running mate, Mitt Romney, as well as scores of other surrogates in West Chester, Ohio.
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