WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, and Republican businessman Eric Hovde, are running for Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate seat. The latest Marquette Law School poll shows Hovde now trailing by just two points among likely voters, down from seven several weeks ago.

“So the amount of crossover voting for Baldwin that we saw reach fairly substantial levels in her Senate race six years ago, is now down in the sort of normal range, with low single digits of Republicans crossing over to vote for her, and fewer Democrats voting for Hovde,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll.

Franklin said how each candidate does will largely depend on the performance of the presidential candidates at the top of the ticket. Both Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump have been stumping in Wisconsin non-stop, with two visits each just this week.

“If Trump were to win by several percentage points, that would be a real challenge for Baldwin,” Franklin said. “If it's a single percentage point difference, like it has been for the last two presidential races, then I think it's real tricky to know which way the Senate race goes.” 

And if Hovde beats Baldwin on Tuesday, Franklin said it’ll show that the state is moving away from its previous Democratic alignment.

“Since 2016, Democrats have won the vast majority of statewide races here in the state, not generally by large margins, but they have won them,” he said. “And so a successful Trump and Hovde victory would be a telling sign that the state has shifted and that Democrats have failed to provide the rationale for electing their candidates that took them to victory in 2018 and 2022 and just slightly here in 2020 in the presidential race.”

If Hovde emerges victorious, it would be the start of his political career and the end of Baldwin’s nearly four decades in elective office. 

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