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Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022

Did Mandela Barnes receive a higher share of the Wisconsin vote than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden?


yes

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes received slightly more of the vote share than President Joe Biden did in 2020 and significantly more than Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

Barnes, who lost to Republican incumbent Ron Johnson, received 49.5% of the vote in the 2022 midterms, compared to Johnson's 50.5%.

In 2020, Biden won Wisconsin with 49.45% of the vote, while Republican incumbent Donald Trump received 48.82%. 

In 2016, Clinton lost Wisconsin and received 46.5% of the vote, compared to Trump's 47.2%.

Turnout tends to be higher in presidential election years. Biden won about 320,000 more votes in 2020 than Barnes did in 2022. And Clinton received about 72,000 more votes than Barnes did.

Both presidential races also had Libertarian candidates on the ballot, while the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin did not have any third-party candidates. In 2020, Jo Jorgenson received 1.17% of the vote, and in 2016, Gary Johnson won 3.6% of the vote.

See a full discussion of this at Wisconsin Watch

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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