Eric Hovde speaks in a video posted on X Tuesday in which he questions how ballots were counted in his election loss to Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Hovde has not conceded despite the race having been called for Baldwin early Nov. 6. (Screenshot | Hovde campaign on X)

Breaking a six-day silence after unofficial returns showed him losing to Sen. Tammy Baldwin, whom AP declared the winner of the Wisconsin U.S. Senate race by less than 1 percentage point, Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde on Tuesday criticized the counting process and said he would wait to decide whether to seek a recount.

In a subsequent talk radio interview, however, Hovde appeared to acknowledge that he had lost the election.

“It’s the most painful loss I’ve ever experienced,” Hovde told Jessica McBride, the guest host on Mark Belling’s show on Milwaukee station WISN 1130. The remark was first reported by the Associated Press.

There has been no evidence of irregularities in the vote count for the Nov. 5 election, which Baldwin won by about 29,000 votes according to unofficial totals reported by Wisconsin’s 72 counties. Counties are currently reviewing the ballots and will submit their official results to the Wisconsin Elections Commission by Nov. 19. The commission completes its certification of the vote by Dec. 1.  

Prior to his talk show appearance Tuesday, Hovde posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, in which he said that he hadn’t spoken about the outcome since election night because “I believe it’s better not to comment until I have the facts.”

Supporters “have reached out and urged me to contest the election,” he said. “While I’m deeply concerned, asking for a recount is a serious decision that requires careful consideration.”

Hovde said differences between the count of registered voters and ballots cast in some Milwaukee wards raised questions, and he also questioned a batch of absentee ballots counted in the early hours Wednesday that heavily favored Baldwin.

Records of registered voters as of Election Day don’t include people who register at the polls, however. In addition, absentee ballots in Milwaukee often get counted later in the process and historically have included a large proportion of  Democratic voters.

Hovde also claimed the state has “almost 8 million registered voters on our voter rolls with only 3.5 million active voters.”

The Wisconsin Elections Commission website includes an explanation of the state’s voter registration database, which is separated into two sections, one for inactive voters and one for active voters.

Only active voters are included in the poll books that go to Wisconsin election clerks and poll workers.

The list of inactive voters, which the commission is required by state law to maintain, includes people who “die, move and register in another state, are convicted of a felony, are adjudicated incompetent to vote, or are made inactive through statutory voter list maintenance processes,” according to the elections commission. The inactive voter list is “a historical public record, and cannot be deleted.”

Democrats, Republicans join in pushing back

Hovde’s comments were met with a barrage of criticism.

“The Milwaukee Election Commission (MEC) unequivocally refutes Eric Hovde’s baseless claims regarding the integrity of our election process,” the commission said in a statement Tuesday, asserting that its operations were transparent and followed established laws and procedures. 

Because Wisconsin does not allow absentee ballots to be processed before Election Day, “large numbers of absentee ballots” are reported late at night. At the same time, according to the statement, with same-day registration, “this historic election saw record-breaking turnout as many newly registered voters exercised their right to support their preferred candidates.”

Criticism also came from Baldwin and Democrats as well as prominent GOP figures, nonpartisan analysts and a bipartisan pro-democracy organization.

“Eric Hovde is spreading lies from the darkest corners of the internet to undercut our free and fair elections,” Baldwin posted on her campaign account on X. “Wisconsin voters made their voices heard. It’s time for Hovde to stop this disgusting attack on our democracy and concede.”

“Mr. Hovde is well within his rights to request a recount and ensure that the vote count is indeed accurate, but questioning the integrity of Wisconsin elections is an avenue that only sows distrust in the system moving forward,” declared the Democracy Defense Project, made up of Republican and Democratic political veterans

The statement was attributed to former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Democrat; former Attorney General JB Van Hollen, a Republican; former U.S. Rep. Scott Klug, a Republican; and former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate — the joint leaders of the Democracy Defense Project’s Wisconsin branch.

Joe Handrick, a Republican election analyst, predicted on Election Day a late-breaking boost to Democrats in Milwaukee, and reiterated that in a follow-up post Monday on X.

Bill McCoshen, a GOP lobbyist whose political career dates to the administration of former Gov. Tommy Thompson, said Tuesday morning on X that differences like the one between the number of votes for former President Donald Trump, who carried Wisconsin, and for Hovde are “not uncommon.”  

The gap of just under 54,000 votes between the two is easily explained by people not voting all the way down the ballot and by third-party candidates, of which there were two in the Senate race, McCoshen wrote. “It’s neither complicated, nor a conspiracy.”

Barry Burden, who directs the UW-Madison’s Election Research Center, said Hovde’s decision to not yet concede represents a new but troublesome trend.

“It’s been happening in the United States over the last few years, of candidates not conceding immediately or graciously as often as they did in the past,” Burden told the Wisconsin Examiner. Donald Trump’s refusal to concede his reelection loss in 2020 “provided a model for some candidates.”

Wisconsin law qualifies Hovde to seek a recount since he finished less than one percentage point behind Baldwin. Nonetheless, “the margin seems so large that I can’t imagine a recount reversing the outcome,” Burden said. “There’s probably no election in U.S. history where that has happened — elections need to be very close for a recount to produce anything different.”

An explicit concession “is one of the things that shows us that democracy is working,” according to University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Mike Wagner. “Democracy is for the losing side because they get a chance to try again in the next election, and admitting when you lose is a critical factor required for the maintenance of democracies.”

Wagner is faculty director of the UW-Madison Center for Communication & Civic Renewal. How the ballot counting unfolded Tuesday night and early Wednesday was no surprise, he said, and absentee ballots are counted according to state law.

“It’s sad when a candidate for office raises unfounded questions about the Integrity of an election,” Wagner said.

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