With Vote Counts Continuing, No Winner Declared In Baldwin, Hovde Senate Race

The race between Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin and Republican challenger Eric Hovde for one of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate seats is still too close to call early Wednesday morning.

By 1:17 a.m. Wednesday and 90 percent of precincts reporting, Hovde was leading with 1,524,080 votes, or 50.1 percent, while Baldwin had 1,455,669 votes, or 47.8 percent. The Associated Press hasn’t declared either candidate as a winner.

The Baldwin campaign held a watch party at the Orpheum Theater in Madison on Tuesday night. Shortly after midnight, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez addressed the crowd and said that Baldwin was encouraged by the vote totals and that there were more ballots to count. 

“We’ve said this from the beginning that this race was going to be close,” she said. “We are encouraged by what we see. Tammy is still in a strong position to win. There are hundreds of thousands of votes left to be counted.”

“It is going to be a long night though,” she said.

Rodriguez and the campaign then encouraged attendees to head home.

An unnamed source in the Baldwin campaign said they are “confident with the remaining votes left to count in Democratic strongholds,” adding, “We will take the lead and we will win.”

The Hovde watch party, held at the Edgewater Hotel in Madison, similarly concluded without an official statement from the candidate.

Campaign Between Baldwin, Hovde Was Hard Fought

The campaign between Baldwin and Hovde has been intense and frequently included personal accusations. While Baldwin held an initial lead in polls conducted earlier in the year, the race tightened in the fall thanks to a deluge of attack ads each candidate unleashed on the other. The latest Marquette Poll in October found that Baldwin had 51 percent support to Hovde’s 49 percent – results so tight that they’re still within the margin of error.

Hovde’s ads came in part from his self-funded campaign, but also from super PACs run by wealthy donors and national Republican allies. “The negative ads directed at Baldwin are having an impact, with her favorability numbers dipping in the later stages of the campaign, now at a net minus-5, where she’d been a slight net positive in the two polls prior. And this is the first poll in a year that’s shown her at a net-negative on favorability,” wrote Civic Media political editor Dan Shafer. 

Shafer noted that Baldwin continued to have a strong pull with independent voters, with more than 60 percent of the support from independent voters. He said this was consistent for three consecutive Marquette Polls and gives her an advantage over Hovde. 

“Her favorability is still a net-positive with independent voters, too — 52 percent to 40 percent,” he wrote. “Hovde’s favorability with independent voters is hovering around just 20 percent, close to a net minus-40.”

Baldwin, who is the state’s junior senator, has served since 2013 and was reelected in 2018. She previously represented Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District from 1999 to 2013 before winning her Senate seat in 2012. Previously, Baldwin served in the state Assembly in the 1990s. She is originally from Madison.

Hovde is a businessman and CEO of Hovde Properties, a real estate firm that owns buildings in Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Janesville and Waunakee, and two banks: H Bancorp, a bank holding company, and Sunwest Bank, which has locations in California, Florida, Arizona, Idaho and Utah, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His family also owns another banking company. Like Baldwin, Hovde originally hails from Madison. He had previously run in the Republican primary for the Senate seat in 2012, but lost to former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned for continuing coverage. This story will be updated.