Wisconsin Senate Election Results 2016: Johnson wins over Feingold

Impact

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has held onto his Senate seat in Wisconsin, according to early election results.

Johnson was in a tight race to keep his seat in the Senate and help the Republicans keep control of Congress' upper chamber. Johnson beat out Feingold, who had been Wisconsin's senator for 18 years, in another close race in 2010.

The campaign, like many other Senate races around the country, was closely tied to the presidential election between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton as several GOP candidates struggled to combat Trump's many controversies.

"Wisconsin reflects what's going on nationally in a lot of ways," Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told USA Today. "It's a swing state where Republicans swept in in the 2010 Tea Party wave and are now facing real difficulty in a presidential election year. Johnson and other Republican senators are having to play defense and navigate around Donald Trump and his controversies."

Feingold led many of the polls throughout the campaign, but his lead tightened in the weeks leading up to Election Day, according to FiveThirtyEight.

FiveThirtyEight gave Feingold a better than 80% chance of winning the Senate seat in Wisconsin.