As Wisconsin race for US Senate remains too close to call, Baldwin clings to her seat

Editor’s Note: The Associated Press has called the race for Baldwin. Read WPR’s coverage here.

The mood was decidedly somber at U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s watch party in downtown Madison late Tuesday night, as election results rolling in from across the country suggested that former President Donald Trump was on a path to victory.

Some attendees began leaving the Orpheum Theater, where the stage was set for an expected speech from the incumbent Baldwin. Others stayed glued to their phones as Wisconsin’s results likely hinged on late-night returns from Milwaukee and elsewhere.

Shortly after midnight, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez took the stage, and told the crowd to head home.

“It is going to be a long night … and we don’t want to keep you here all night, so we are going to let you go home and get some sleep,” she said. “But thank you so much for your support for this campaign, and all that you have done for Wisconsin.”

But while preliminary results from Wisconsin put the swing state into Trump’s camp for the presidency early Wednesday morning, Baldwin’s campaign claimed their own narrow victory.

While the Associated Press has not called the race, Baldwin declared victory at about 4:30 a.m. As of noon on Wednesday, the margin was just under a percentage point, or about 29,000 votes.

Now the two-term incumbent clings to her seat after — by far — her narrowest victory to date, while Republican opponent Eric Hovde has not yet conceded, and the state Republican party says it may consider a recount.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning, Wisconsin Republican Party chair Brian Schimming said the party would look into its options.

“It is a very, very close race. There’s no doubt about that. And so we’ll take a look at that issue. But I just don’t have anything definitive to say now,” he said. “I think we’ll get a better idea in the next few days, and also when the canvass is done,” referring to the process by which preliminary results are made official in the days following an election.

Under state law, a second-place candidate can request a recount if the margin is less than 1 percent. If this margin holds, Hovde would need to pay for it.

A source from the Baldwin campaign said they were confident a recount would not affect the outcome of the race.

In a state where paper-thin margins in statewide elections are the norm, Baldwin has long been an outlier. She won her last two elections to the Senate handily, by 5.5 points in 2012 and 11 points in 2018.

While her campaign admitted throughout that they expected a more competitive race this time around, the polls showed Hovde narrowing in on her in the final weeks of the race in a way that surprised national election watchers.

The results point to an increasingly polarized electorate, where small shifts in voting behavior can make all the difference — a point that Hovde bemoaned. On social media, he expressed frustration about a far-right third-party candidate who he said pulled votes from his camp.

“We’re watching the final precinct results come in. We’re certainly disappointed that the Democrats’ effort to siphon votes with a fraudulent candidate had a significant impact on the race, with those votes making up more than the entire margin of the race right now,” Hovde tweeted on Wednesday morning.

The third-party candidate he referred to is Thomas Leager of the America First Party, who scooped up just under 29,000 votes. An independent candidate, Phil Anderson, received more than 42,000 votes, or 1.3 percent of the vote.

But Leager, a far-right candidate, was supported by Democratic Party megadonors, in an effort to siphon votes from the Trump-backed Hovde.  

Hovde’s campaign has not responded to WPR’s request for comment.