Wisconsin Senate Race Heats Up Ahead Of November Election 

Incumbent Tammy Baldwin (D), Eric Hovde (R), Thomas Leager (America First Party), and Phillip Anderson (Disrupt The Corruption Party) are running in the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin on November 5, 2024.

The Associated Press’s Scott Bauer wrote, “The seat in battleground Wisconsin is seen as essential for Democrats, who know they must win there if they hope to maintain majority control of the Senate. A win there for Republicans would dramatically increase their chances of gaining the upper hand in an election landscape that has Democrats defending far more Senate seats this year.”

In 2018, Baldwin defeated Leah Vukmir (R) 55.4% to 44.6%, the largest margin of victory of any statewide race in Wisconsin that November—the average margin of victory in Wisconsin’s November 2018 statewide races was 4.9%. In Wisconsin’s 2022 Senate race, Ron Johnson (R) defeated Mandela Barnes (D) 50.4% to 49.4%. As of August 27, 2024, The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, Decision Desk HQ and The Hill, Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, and Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball rated the election as Lean Democratic.

Baldwin, who was elected in 2012, earned a bachelor’s degree from Smith College and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She previously represented Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District, was a Wisconsin Assembly member, and served on the Dane County Board of Supervisors. Before holding elected office, she was a lawyer. Baldwin said her top priorities are lowering costs, making abortion accessible nationally, and defending democracy.

In an interview with Democracy Docket’s Crystal Hill, Baldwin said, “This is a time where we need to continue our work on, first, lowering the cost of things…We’re also trying to secure rights and freedoms back that we’ve lost… After the Dobbs decision, especially in a state like Wisconsin with a statutory criminal abortion ban that was passed in the year 1849, we need to secure those rights and freedoms back for half of our state, and we also need to defend our democracy. We’re one of the states that elected a slate of fake electors. It’s a state where the Republican-led Legislature has tried to make it harder for people to vote.”

Hovde is a real estate executive, bank CEO, and co-founder of the family-run charity, the Hovde Foundation. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Hovde said his biggest priorities are inflation, the U.S.-Mexico border, and the cost of healthcare.

In an interview with WMTV 15’s Vanessa Kjeldsen, Hovde said, “Our country has real deep problems going on right now. Inflation is really hammering people; the stories I hear are very sad to hear in many cases…When you think of what’s happened to the cost of food, insurance, energy, healthcare, it’s a real serious issue. And a lot of this has been sparked, the majority of it, by all this reckless spending. So, I’m deeply concerned about what we’re leaving to our next generations.”

The outcome of this race will affect the partisan balance of the U.S. Senate in 2025.

Thirty-four of 100 seats are up for election, including one special election. Of the seats up for election in 2024, Democrats hold 19, Republicans hold 11, and independents hold four. As of May 2024, eight members of the U.S. Senate had announced they were not running for re-election.

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