Losing Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde has so far refused to acknowledge his loss to incumbent Democratic US Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

A week after election day, Hovde posted a five-minute video on his X account with his thoughts on the race.

“I think 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 “almost 90% of those ballots.”

“Statistically, this result seems unlikely,” Hovde said. “Because it didn’t match the pattern of the same-day vote in Milwaukee, where I got 22% of the vote.”

Let’s see if Hovde is right.

Baldwin received 80.9% of the absentee vote

Absentee ballots are only part of the total number of votes in any election. But since Hovde is focused on absentee ballots, it’s pretty easy to see that 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 the United States Senate or skipped that race.

Milwaukee received 108,964 absentee ballots on Nov. 5, according to the unofficial count.

Of that group, Baldwin received 88,229 and Hovde received 17,699 absentee ballots.

So Baldwin got 80.9% of the absentee vote and Hovde got 16.2% of that.

Apparently, Baldwin didn’t get “almost 90%” of the absentee votes.

In comparison, Baldwin slightly outperformed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris who received 87,852 absentee ballots, or 80.6%. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump topped Hovde by getting 18,698 or 17.1%.

That pattern occurred statewide as Baldwin outperformed Harris and Hovde was not carried by Trump who ended up winning the state.

Hovde got 21.1% on election day

Hovde claims the pattern of absentee ballots doesn’t match what he received on Election Day, so let’s review what happened in Milwaukee on Election Day.

On Election Day itself, 140,043 votes were cast in Milwaukee, according to the unofficial count. Of that number, Baldwin received 102,598 and Hovde received 29,574.

So Baldwin pulled down 73.2% of the vote on Election Day compared to Hovde’s 21.1% of the vote. It’s not quite 22%, as he said, but it’s closer than he said Baldwin’s absentee vote was.

Often, same-day voting comes in at a different split than absentee ballots, because traditionally more Republicans vote on Election Day than in the past. And Republicans this year pushed for more of their supporters to vote absentee.

And the vote that is counted early on Wednesday morning should not have surprised Hovde either.

Under Wisconsin law, absentee ballots cannot be processed before 7 a.m. on Election Day. The Republican-controlled state Senate earlier this year let a bipartisan bill die it would have allowed officials to begin processing absentee ballots the day before the election and therefore finish counting all ballots at a more reasonable time on election day. And thus avoid updating the results at 4am

Our decision

Suggesting that there may be irregularities in the vote count, Hovde claimed that Baldwin received “almost 90%” of the absentee ballots in the city of Milwaukee.

According to the city’s results on its website, Baldwin received 80.9% of the vote, which is not “almost 90%”.

Our definition of false is “the statement is not correct.” It fits here.