Wisconsin Senate race tightens, flashing warning signs for Democrats

News signs of a tightening race in Wisconsin are flashing warning signs for incumbent Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin as she looks to fend off a challenge from Trump-backed Eric Hovde, giving Republicans a boost in their efforts to take the upper chamber this fall.

The Cook Political Report shifted the race to “toss-up” status this week, and public and internal polling has raised alarms that Hovde could be closing the gap with less than a month to go until Election Day.

Democrats are still largely confident Baldwin will hold onto her seat, but the encouraging signs for her opponent underscore the race is set to be one of the most competitive in the country this fall as the parties fight for Senate control.

The incumbent’s campaign “has been very vocal with their supporters that this race is tightening,” according to Wisconsin-based Democratic strategist Thad Nation, and that's “absolutely” prompting more concern among Democrats in the closely watched contest. 

“This is Wisconsin. It’s a tight race. I mean, most statewide races here are determined by 25,000 votes or less,” Nation said. “Headed into the last three-and-a-half weeks of this race — this race was always going to tighten.” 

Cook’s Swing State Project surveys show Baldwin’s lead has shrunk since August, falling from a 7-point lead in August to a 2-point lead last week, making it the closest Senate race across the five battlegrounds tested. Polling averages from Decision Desk HQ and The Hill paint a similar picture, showing Baldwin currently leading by 3.5 points, a notable drop since early September, when she led by around 7 points.

Baldwin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week that it's "very close" in her own internal polls, which reportedly show her up 2 points over her Republican challenger, and confirmed a recent Axios story on growing Democratic fears in the Senate race. Hovde's campaign has seen the same 1- or 2-point split in its own recent internal polling, a spokesperson confirmed to The Hill. 

"It's closing out here to be one of the closest battleground states in the country," said Alec Zimmerman, a Republican strategist who led communications for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) during the 2022 midterms. 

"[Baldwin] doesn't have the wind blowing her sails quite the same level that she had the previous two elections, so I think the momentum on the ground for Hovde is real."

Baldwin became the first woman elected to represent Wisconsin in Congress and the first openly LGBTQ lawmaker in the Senate when she won her seat back in 2012. Six years ago, she comfortably beat off a challenge from Republican Leah Vukmir, who was supported by former President Trump, to win a second term. 

This time around, Baldwin’s seat is seen as a big GOP pickup opportunity. After Rep. Mike Gallagher's (R-Wis.) decision not to run briefly worried some in the party about their chances, Hovde, a Madison-area businessman and millionaire, has emerged as a formidable candidate in the battleground-state race. 

Hovde ran for the Senate back in 2012, but lost in the primary to former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R), who went on to lose to Baldwin. Now, he’s running again with Trump’s backing, and he’s benefited from being able to largely self-fund his campaign. 

And as the polls suggest an increasingly competitive landscape, there’s also been an influx of GOP spending in the race. 

The Senate Leadership Fund, a top super PAC run by advisers to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), made a recent ad buy in the state for a whopping $17 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Republicans are expected to upend Democrats’ ad advantage in the coming weeks. 

Baldwin is “in a nip-and-tuck race in Wisconsin and the [Republicans] just dumped a boatload of cash into the race,” David Axelrod said in a post on the social platform X. “[A] Spending edge down the stretch could tip this race.”

Baldwin, though, has raised and spent more so far, according to the latest July Federal Election Commission filings compiled by OpenSecrets.

Some polling does conflict with the Cook findings and internal polls, suggesting the Democrat has a stronger edge. In a Marquette University Law School poll released last week, for example, Baldwin was 7 points ahead of her challenger.

A big boost for Baldwin this cycle is that she’s on the ballot with a presidential race, Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, told The Hill. Marquette found Vice President Harris up 4 points over Trump in a head-to-head match-up, and Democrats expect the new energy behind Harris’s fast-tracked bid to boost their candidates downballot.  

“On election night, I’ll be looking to see… if [Trump] wins the state by 1, is that enough to drag Hovde over the line or pull Baldwin down? Would Trump need to win the state by 2 or even 3 to really pull Baldwin into a tie or a loss?” Franklin said. 

Notably, recent surveys from Quinnipiac University and Emerson College both found Trump up slightly in the state’s White House race, conflicting with the Marquette findings. Decision Desk HQ averages put the Republican ahead by 0.1 points. 

Trump won the Badger State by less than a point in 2016, and President Biden flipped it back into Democrats’ column with a similarly slim margin in 2020.

“I think that what you're going to see is a really, really close race at the top of the ticket, and [a] really close race in the Senate race. And I think that they're probably a little bit more tied together than what people realize at this point,” Zimmerman said. 

A Hovde win on Nov. 5 could help hoist Republicans to the Senate majority. The GOP needs just two seats to take control, and some of Baldwin’s fellow Democratic incumbents are also vulnerable. In Montana, Republican Tim Sheehy is now favored to oust Sen. Jon Tester (D), and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) is staring down a toss-up race against Republican Bernie Moreno. The open Senate seat in Michigan is also rated a toss-up. 

But though Wisconsin Democrats acknowledge signs of narrowing odds in the Senate race, they largely say it’s not a surprise to see such a toss-up in the purple state, contending that Baldwin has the incumbency strength to stave Hovde off. 

“This race was always going to be a toss-up, that’s why Tammy Baldwin is working every day to unite Wisconsinites of all stripes and win,” Baldwin campaign spokesperson Andrew Mamo told The Hill in a statement.

Milwaukee-based Democratic strategist Melissa Baldauff also said she always expected the race to narrow, but she predicted Baldwin will still win out. She said she’s seen a surge of enthusiasm from young Wisconsin voters energized by Baldwin and Harris, and suggested that demographic may not be fully represented in the latest polls. 

Brandon Scholz, a retired Republican strategist in the state, said independents will decide the race as Democrats and Republicans further coalesce behind their respective candidates. 

Baldwin and Hovde are slated to debate next week, and their showdown could serve as one of the candidates’ last chances to land some punches and move undecided voters, he added. 

“Wisconsin is a very, very, very partisan state. We are very polarized here,” Scholz said. “My sense is what happens in the next three some odd weeks left, it's really going to be these undecided ticket-splitters, independents, maybe some double haters that are really going to decide if it's Harris or Trump or Hovde or Baldwin. I believe it's that close, and I believe that's kind of what's left.”