Fact check: Hovde’s claim Baldwin won ‘nearly 90%’ of absentee votes is a flop

Losing Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde has, so far, refused to concede his loss to incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

A week after Election Day, Hovde posted a five minute video to his X account with his thoughts on the race.

“I believe it’s better not to comment until I have the facts,” he said in the first few seconds of the video. “Like many of my supporters, I was shocked by what unfolded on election night.”

Hovde went on to say that at 4 a.m. Milwaukee updated its count to include roughly 108,000 absentee ballots and that Baldwin won “nearly 90% of those ballots.”

“Statistically, this outcome seems improbable,” Hovde said. “As it didn’t match the pattern from same day voting in Milwaukee, where I received 22% of the vote.”

Let’s see if Hovde is correct.

Baldwin received 80.9% of absentee vote

Absentee ballots are just a portion of the total votes in any election. But since Hovde is focused on absentee ballots, it’s fairly easy to see his claim is incorrect by going to the city of Milwaukee’s election results page. It should be noted that some absentee voters chose third party candidates for U.S. senate or skipped that race.

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