The Wisconsin Republican acknowledges his defeat in the Senate race, but questions arise and he reflects on his story

CNN
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Eric Hovde, the Wisconsin Republican who nearly unseated Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, acknowledged as much this week he lost the election But also raised questions about the legitimacy of the result as he considers the request for a recount.

Even if they celebrate it President-elect Donald TrumpAfter winning the 2020 election, right-wing figures such as tech billionaire Elon Musk and some prominent 2020 election deniers have taken advantage of 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 predicted last week that Baldwin would win a third term, and the latest unofficial results show Hovde losing by less than a percentage point. He came up short even though Trump narrowly carried the state: Baldwin and Vice President Kamala Harris finished with very similar vote totals, but Hovde trailed Trump by about 56,000 votes.

Despite delegitimizing the outcome and saying he was “carefully considering” a recount, Hovde also did something Trump did not do in 2020: acknowledge that he had lost.

“I am blessed with a lot of energy and a very thick skin, and I am a very resilient person,” Hovde said Tuesday on a conservative radio talk show. “I will definitely pick myself up and move on and continue to fight for our beautiful country and our state, and that is why I am involved in this whole matter. It is the most painful loss I have ever experienced.”

Election officials quickly refuted Hovde’s theories about alleged irregularities. Voting experts such as David Becker, who runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, said there is “nothing inappropriate” about waiting to concede until the results are final, but any post-election lawsuits would need to be supported by facts.

“If (Hovde) plans to mount a legal challenge, they will need more than speculation and conspiracy theories spread on social media,” Becker said. “They will have to present evidence in court that will withstand scrutiny, sufficient to overcome their deficiency.”

In one four minute video Posted on X, Musk’s platform formerly known as Twitter, Hovde promoted several baseless claims to question the legitimacy of Baldwin’s win.

The wealthy businessman and CEO of Sunwest Bank said he was “shocked” by the overnight vote reporting from Milwaukee, which erased his lead and confirmed Baldwin’s victory. He said “statistically this outcome seems unlikely,” saying Baldwin won an inexplicably high share of the new vote.

But others did not share Hovde’s surprise, including conservative pundits WHO predicted Baldwin’s strong performance in real time. That batch of about 109,000 new votes came from the city of Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold. Further, the ballots in that batch were mail-in and early voting, which disproportionately favored Democrats. The Milwaukee Election Commission had also clarified that the late night results were normal.

“It is both expected and routine that absentee ballots — in this case, more than 100,000 — be counted and reported in the late hours of election night,” the commission said in a statement Tuesday, which also explained that state law does not allow pre-election. -processing of mail-in ballots, leading to “reporting of large numbers of absentee ballots late at night.”

In the video, Hovde also claimed there were “voting inconsistencies” in Milwaukee as 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 allegations are without merit.” ”

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

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

Role of third party candidates

Hovde further accused Democrats of trying to “mislead voters” and “syphone votes away from me” by backing an independent pro-Trump candidate and a libertarian candidate.

While Hovde is currently just over 27,000 votes behind Baldwin, Libertarian nominee Phil Anderson received about 42,000 votes and Thomas Leager of the upstart America First Party received about 28,000 votes. News reports show that the Democrats sent mailers promoting Anderson and that Leager’s campaign has ties to Democratic donors And advisors.

“It is clear that the claims about the dishonest third-party candidates are completely legal and will have no effect on a recount or electoral contest,” said Ben Ginsberg, a veteran Republican Party election law attorney and CNN contributor. “He has every right to conduct a recount under Wisconsin law. But it is not a margin that has historically been overturned by a recount.”

Hovde said in his video that he is still looking at “all options,” including requesting a recount, and plans to announce a decision once the results are known. Counties must submit their final vote counts to the state by Nov. 19, and the deadline for statewide certification is Dec. 1.

His video was promoted by Musk, who said the outcome ‘certainly’ looks unlikely, Kari Lake, the Republican on whom CNN is projecting to lose this year’s Senate race in Arizona and wrongly claimed there was massive fraud in her losing race for governor and conservative attorney in 2022 Cleta Mitchellwho was on Trump infamous call with Georgia officials in which he attempted to do so fall over the result of 2020.

Under Wisconsin law, Hovde would pay for a recount. The Trump campaign paid for a partial one narrate of the 2020 elections in Wisconsin, which he lost by about 20,000 votes for Biden. There was also a rural one narrate initiated in 2016 by the Green Party candidatethen Trump won with almost 23,000 votes,

“He asks 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 are not reversed during recounts. But it’s not crazy to ask for it.”

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