Wisconsin Republican acknowledges defeat in Senate race, but questions result and mulls recount

By Marshall Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — Eric Hovde, the Wisconsin Republican who nearly unseated Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, acknowledged this week that he lost the election but also raised questions about the legitimacy of the result as he mulls requesting a recount.

Even as they celebrate President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, right-wing figures such as tech billionaire Elon Musk, as well as some prominent 2020 election deniers, have seized on Hovde’s refusal to concede. They have embraced his baseless claims on social media that there were statistically “improbable” results and “inconsistencies” with the vote count.

CNN projected last week that Baldwin would win a third term, and the latest unofficial results show Hovde losing by less than a percentage point. He fell short even while Trump narrowly carried the state: Baldwin and Vice President Kamala Harris finished with very similar vote totals, but Hovde lagged behind Trump by about 56,000 votes.

Despite delegitimizing the result and saying he was giving “careful consideration” to a recount, Hovde also did something Trump did not do in 2020: acknowledge that he lost.

“I’ve been blessed with a lot of energy and very thick skin, and I’m a very resilient person,” Hovde said Tuesday on a conservative talk radio show. “I will definitely pick myself up and move on and continue fight for our wonderful country and state, which is why I got into this whole thing. It’s the most painful loss I’ve ever experienced.”

Election officials swiftly rebutted Hovde’s theories about supposed irregularities. Voting experts such as David Becker, who runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said there’s “nothing inappropriate” about waiting to concede until the result is final, but any potential postelection lawsuits would need to be backed up by facts.

“If (Hovde) intends to pursue a legal challenge, they will need more than speculation and conspiracy theories spread on social media,” Becker said. “They will need to bring evidence to court that will stand up to scrutiny, sufficient to overcome their deficit.”

Election officials rebut Hovde’s claims

In a four-minute video posted to X, the Musk-owned platform formerly called Twitter, Hovde promoted several unfounded claims to question the legitimacy of Baldwin’s win.

The wealthy businessman and CEO of Sunwest Bank said he was “shocked” by the late-night ballot reporting from Milwaukee, which erased his lead and cemented Baldwin’s victory. He said, “statistically, this outcome seems improbable,” because he said Baldwin won an inexplicably high share of the new votes.

But others didn’t share Hovde’s surprise, including conservative pundits who predicted Baldwin’s strong showing in real time. That batch of roughly 109,000 new votes came from the city of Milwaukee, which is a Democratic stronghold. Further, the ballots in that batch were mail-in and early votes, which disproportionately favor Democrats. The Milwaukee Election Commission had also been clear that late-night results were normal.

“It is both expected and routine that absentee ballots – over 100,000 in this case – are counted and reported in the late hours of Election Night,” the commission said Tuesday in a statement, which also explained that state law doesn’t allow the pre-processing of mail ballots, leading to the “reporting of large numbers of absentee ballots late at night.”

In the video, Hovde also claimed there were “voting inconsistencies” in Milwaukee because some precincts saw “turnout of over 150% of registered voters,” or higher.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that more people voted than were eligible. These seemingly bizarre numbers can be attributed to same-day voter registration, which is allowed in Wisconsin.

The Milwaukee Election Commission said that “many newly registered voters exercised their right to support their preferred candidates” by registering to vote on Election Day and that it was “fully confident that Mr. Hovde’s accusations lack any merit.”

Baldwin responded to Hovde’s video by calling on her rival to accept the election result.

“On Election Day, I called on all Republicans and Democrats to accept the results of a free and fair election and process, and that’s what I did,” Baldwin told CNN on Tuesday afternoon. “I recognized my victory and Donald Trump’s in the state of Wisconsin, and he needs to do the same.”

Role of third-party candidates

Hovde further accused Democrats of trying to “deceive voters” and “siphon votes from me” by propping up an independent pro-Trump candidate and a Libertarian candidate.

While Hovde currently trails Baldwin by just over 27,000 votes, Libertarian nominee Phil Anderson got about 42,000 votes and Thomas Leager from the upstart America First Party received about 28,000 votes. News reports indicate that Democrats sent mailers promoting Anderson and that Leager’s campaign has ties to Democratic donors and consultants.

“Obviously, the claims about the unfair third-party candidates – that’s perfectly legal, and will have no effect on a recount or election contest,” said Ben Ginsberg, a veteran GOP election law attorney and CNN contributor. “He has every right to bring a recount under Wisconsin law. But it’s not a margin that historically gets turned around by a recount.”

Hovde said in his video that he is still reviewing “all options,” including requesting a recount, and plans to announce a decision once the result is finalized. Counties must submit their final vote counts to the state by November 19, and the deadline for statewide certification is December 1.

His video was promoted by Musk, who said the result “sure does” look improbable, Kari Lake, the Republican whom CNN projects to lose this year’s Senate race in Arizona and falsely claimed there was mass fraud in her losing 2022 race for governor, and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who was on Trump’s infamous call with Georgia officials in which he tried to overturn the 2020 result.

Under Wisconsin law, Hovde would pay for a recount. The Trump campaign paid for a partial recount of the 2020 election in Wisconsin, which he lost by about 20,000 votes to Biden. There was also a statewide recount in 2016 initiated by the Green Party candidate, when Trump won by nearly 23,000 votes,

“He’s raising some initial questions … and there are things he says that look strange. But in most cases, these are just things you don’t like because you lost,” Ginsberg said. “Margins of 30,000 don’t get turned around in recounts. But it’s not crazy to ask for one.”

CNN’s Ali Main, Casey Tolan, Matt Holt, Manu Raju, Haley Talbot and Ethan Cohen contributed to this report.

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