Losing Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde of Wisconsin has so far refused to concede his loss to incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.
A week after Election Day, Hovde posted a five-minute video on his X account with his thoughts on the race.
“I think it’s better not to comment until I get the facts,” he said in the first few seconds of the video. “Like many of my supporters, I was shocked by what unfolded on election night.”
“Like many of my supporters, I was shocked by what unfolded on election night,” said losing Senate candidate Eric Hovde.
Hovde went on to say that Milwaukee had updated its count at 4 a.m. with about 108,000 absentee ballots and that Baldwin had won “nearly 90% of those ballots.”
“Statistically, this outcome seems unlikely,” Hovde said. “Because it didn’t match the pattern of the same day voting in Milwaukee, where I got 22% of the vote.”
Let’s see if Hovde is right.
Baldwin received 80.9% of the absentee vote
In each election, absentee ballots make up only a portion of the total votes. But since Hovde focuses on absentee ballots, it’s pretty easy to see that his claim is incorrect when you go to the City of Milwaukee’s election results page. It should be noted that some absentee voters chose third-party candidates for the U.S. Senate or skipped that race.
Milwaukee received 108,964 absentee ballots on Nov. 5, according to the unofficial count.
Of that group, Baldwin received 88,229 and Hovde 17,699 absentee ballots.
So Baldwin got about 80.9% of the absentee votes, and Hovde got about 16.2% of them.
Clearly, Baldwin did not get “nearly 90%” of the absentee votes.
By comparison, Baldwin performed slightly better than Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who received 87,852 absentee votes, or 80.6%. Newly elected Republican President Donald Trump outperformed Hovde by receiving 18,698 or 17.1%.
That pattern continued across the state, as Baldwin outperformed Harris and Hovde was not carried by Trump, who ultimately won the state.
Hovde received 21.1% on election day
Hovde claims the absentee voting pattern doesn’t match what he got on Election Day, so let’s take a look at what happened on Election Day in Milwaukee.
According to the unofficial count, 140,043 votes were cast in Milwaukee. Of that number, Baldwin received 102,598 and Hovde 29,574.
Baldwin thus received 73.2% of the vote on election day, compared to Hovde’s 21.1% of those votes. That’s not quite 22%, as he said, but it’s closer than what he said was Baldwin’s absentee vote.
Often the same-day vote distribution differs from absentee votes, because traditionally more Republicans vote on Election Day than earlier. Republicans pushed this year for more of their supporters to vote absentee.
The vote that was counted early Wednesday morning should not have surprised Hovde either.
Under Wisconsin law, absentee ballots cannot be processed before 7 a.m. on Election Day. The Republican-controlled Senate earlier this year killed a bipartisan bill that would have allowed clerks to begin processing absentee ballots the day before the election and therefore count all ballots at a more reasonable time on Election Day to complete – and thus avoid updating the results at 4am
PolitiFact Truth Meter: False
Our statement
Suggesting there could be irregularities in the vote counting, Hovde claimed Baldwin received “nearly 90%” of absentee ballots in Milwaukee.
According to the city’s results on its website, Baldwin received 80.9% of the vote, which is not “nearly 90%.”
Our definition of False is: “the statement is not accurate.” That fits here.
Sources
Eric Hovde, X-post, November 12, 2024
City of Milwaukee, election results, last checked November 13, 2024
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, GOP drops absentee ballot dump measure, leaving door open to false fraud claims, March 13, 2024
This article originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Fact check: Hovde claims Baldwin won ‘nearly 90%’ of absentee votes in Milwaukee
