Mat Drudge has made a career out of being first. The NRO was simply parroting the info they were giving.
NRO was horrible. Not only did they parrot the numbers, they did their best to induce a mass panic by acting like the election was already all over. What idiots.
Obviusly I don't agree with everything drudge carries as headlines, or hurricane news (even if I am only 45 miles from him sometimes), etc, but to his credit, he CARRIES STORIES others will not touch, usually for apparently political reasons relating to their own networks political agendas. In fact, he seems pretty equal-opportunity about the stories he carries.
He carried swift boat vet stories. It is hard to estimate how much his coverage of them augmented their eventual impact.