Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin declared victory earlier today after the latest tally of its mail-in votes gave Milwaukee a nearly 16,000-vote lead over Republican businessman Eric Hovde.

Baldwin's campaign said it expects that margin to grow as communities like Oshkosh and Racine have announced their final results.

With 97% of precincts reporting, Baldwin had 49.2% of the vote, compared to 48.7% for Hovde. That was a lead of almost 16,000 votes.

If Baldwin's lead holds, she will be the first Wisconsin candidate for U.S. Senate to win an election since 1968, when the other party's candidate won the presidential race. Democrat Gaylord Nelson won re-election that year, even though Republican Richard Nixon won Wisconsin's electoral votes in a landslide national election.

Along with longtime libertarian activist Phil Anderson, who ran under the “Disrupt the Corruption” banner, Phil Leager of the America First Party was also on the ballot. Democrats helped Leager qualify for the Wisconsin ballot, and he had about 28,000 votes in unofficial polls while Anderson had more than 41,000.

Before Milwaukee and other central county municipalities released their results, Hovde urged supporters at his election night party to go home because “we need a little more time to work through this process.”

“It's unfortunate. If the Democrats hadn't built a facility, it probably would have been decided some time ago. But you know what? It is what it is,” Hovde said.

Baldwin, Hovde and the groups supporting them have spent more than $240 million on advertising alone since Jan. 1. That surpassed the previous Wisconsin record for all spending, which Open Secrets had tracked in 2022, of nearly $225 million.

Baldwin and her supporters had an advantage in advertising spending of about $18 million throughout the race. But Hovde's side had a significant spending advantage starting in late September, when the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund entered the Wisconsin race.

That group, Hovde and others have grilled Baldwin over transgender issues, her 25-year residency in Washington and claims that she had a conflict of interest by failing to disclose the business interests of Maria Brisbane, a New York financial advisor. The two are not married, but they own a condo together in Washington, DC.

Meanwhile, Baldwin and her supporters relentlessly attack Hovde over abortion, his past comments and his ownership of a California bank.

The latest Marquette University Law School poll of the race showed Baldwin's favorable/unfavorable rating at 45-50 for the first time since January. At the same time, Hovde started the race on its head and stayed there, finishing 36-48 in the final poll.

Before Election Day, the Real Clear Politics polling average was plus 1.8 percentage points in favor of Baldwin.