Wisconsin GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde is casting doubt on the results of his election following his loss to Democratic incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
“I was shocked by what unfolded on election night,” he said in a video posted to social media Tuesday. “At 1 a.m. I was receiving calls of congratulations, and based on the models, it appeared I would win the Senate race. Then, at 4 a.m. Milwaukee reported approximately 108,000 absentee ballots, with Senator Baldwin receiving nearly 90% of those ballots. Statistically, this outcome seems improbable.”
The latest unofficial results from Milwaukee show Baldwin winning 78 percent of the city’s vote, and it’s not unusual for absentee, or mail, ballots to be more Democratic than the overall vote.
Hovde and Baldwin had a tight — and at times, tense — race. The businessman had not commented since the Associated Press projected Baldwin’s win last Wednesday.
While he refrained from asking for a recount “because [recounts] don’t look at the integrity of a ballot,” Hovde said that he will announce his decision on how to proceed “once the final information is available and all options are reviewed.”
Part of Hovde’s argument referred to preliminary totals that Joe Biden received 10 million more votes in 2020 than Kamala Harris this year — even though some states are still counting substantial numbers of ballots.
“Since last Wednesday, numerous parties have reached out to me about voting inconsistencies, such as certain voting precincts in Milwaukee having turnout of over 150% of registered voters, and in some cases over 200%,” he said, without providing evidence.
Hovde also blamed Democrats for funding third party candidates Thomas Leager and Phil Anderson for drawing votes away from himself.
“If either of these candidates had not been in the race, the outcome would be different today,” he claimed.
Tammy Baldwin responded in a social media post on Tuesday, writing that Hovde “is spreading lies from the darkest corners of the internet to undercut our free and fair elections,” and calling for him to “stop this disgusting attack on our democracy and concede.”