WISCONSIN — Republican businessman and U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde has conceded in the Senate race to incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. 

Hovde announced his concession in a six-minute long video on X.

The Associated Press declared Baldwin the winner of the race last Wednesday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the polls closed in Wisconsin. She outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost Wisconsin by about as many votes as Baldwin defeated Hovde.

Baldwin's team responded to Hovde's concession in a statement to Spectrum News.

“Now that he’s finally conceded, I wish Eric Hovde a safe trip back to California,” said Arik Wolk, the rapid response director for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin GOP Chairman Brian Schimming also shared a response.

"Thank you Eric Hovde for running a hard-fought and honorable campaign against an entrenched career politician. Eric's campaign was focused on ideas not personal attacks which resulted in the second most votes in Wisconsin Republican history. We have a stronger party as a result of Eric's work," said Schimming in a statement on X.

Hovde posted a video last week saying he would not concede and made claims that Wisconsin — specifically Milwaukee — saw alleged “voting inconsistencies.” There is no evidence of wrongdoing. Later that day, he admitted in a radio interview that he had lost, but he still didn’t concede.

In the new video posted Monday, Hovde continued to raise concerns regarding the election. However, he said a “recount would serve no purpose.” He said that’s because it would just involve recounting the ballots.

Hovde could have requested a recount because his margin of defeat was less than 1 percentage point, at about 29,000 votes. But he would have had to pay for a recount himself.

Although there is no evidence of wrongdoing in the election, many Hovde supporters questioned a surge in votes for Baldwin that were reported by Milwaukee around 4:30 a.m. the morning after the election. Those votes put Baldwin over the top.

The votes were the tabulation of absentee ballots from Milwaukee. Those ballots are counted at a central location and reported all at once, often well after midnight on Election Day. Elections officials for years have made clear that those ballots are reported later than usual because of the sheer number that have to be counted and the fact that state law does not allow for processing them before polls open.

Republicans and Democrats alike, along with state and Milwaukee election leaders, warned in the days and weeks leading up to the election that the Milwaukee absentee ballots would be reported late and cause a huge influx of Democratic votes.

Hovde also repeated his complaint about the candidacy of Thomas Leager, who ran as a member of the America First Party. Leager, a far-right candidate who was recruited by Democratic operatives and donors to run as a conservative, finished a distant fourth.

Republicans supported independent presidential candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein in efforts to take votes away from Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to get his name removed from the ballot in Wisconsin and other swing states after he backed Trump.

In the Wisconsin Senate race, Leager got about 400 fewer votes than the margin between Baldwin and Hovde. But Hovde claimed on Monday that he would have won the Senate race if Leager had not been on the ballot.

The Baldwin win came in the face of Democratic losses nationwide that allowed Republicans to take control of the Senate.

Her win was the narrowest of her three Senate races. Baldwin won in 2012 by almost 6 percentage points and in 2018 by nearly 11 points.

Hovde, a multimillionaire bank owner and real estate developer, first ran for Senate in 2012 but lost in the Republican primary. He was backed by President-elect Donald Trump this year and poured millions of dollars of his own money into his campaign.

Hovde on Monday did not rule out another political campaign in the future. Some Republicans have floated him as a potential candidate for governor in 2026.