Staff Reports
In the race for the Senate seat in Alaska, Republican Lisa Murkowski had a slight lead over her challenger, Kelly Tshibaka. As of Saturday, Murkowski had a lead of less than 2,000 votes, while Tshibaka had received 110,861 votes. Although neither candidate was able to claim a majority, Murkowski received over 100,000 more votes than Tshibaka.
Absentee ballots had to be submitted by November 18. The results of the election will be announced on November 23.
In Alaska, the voters rank the four candidates from the jungle primary in order of preference. If no candidate gets a majority of the first-choice votes, their competitor will be declared ineligible. The second-choice candidates will then receive the votes of the voters who chose them. The winner will be decided based on the number of votes that the four candidates received. In the first round, none of the candidates managed to get a majority of the votes. One of the candidates who will be eliminated is Buzz Kelley, who received less than 3% of the total. Patricia Chesbro came in second with 10.4% of the vote.
It's possible that Murkowski would receive more support from the votes of her second-choice candidate, Charlie Chesbro, who had 26,974. Tshibaka, on the other hand, was favored by Donald Trump.
After Murkowski was able to overcome Tshibaka’s first-choice vote advantage, her campaign team used the movie "The Usual Suspect" to mock the Republican challenger.
"And just like that … Kelly's claim that she only lost because of Ranked Choice was gone," text overlaying the GIF states.
— Lisa Murkowski (@LisaForSenate) November 19, 2022
Senator Lisa Murkowski is following in the footsteps of her father, Frank, who was a former Senator. She was able to secure her second term in the Senate after being placed there by her father. Murkowski is a moderate Republican and an ally of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. She has been criticized by some members of her own party due to her stance on various issues. In 2010, she lost the primary election to Joe Miller, who was a conservative candidate for the Senate. Despite this, she was able to secure the support of the voters through the write-in ballot. In 2016, she was able to defeat Miller, who was a third-party candidate.
Although she isn't a supporter of Trump, Murkowski did vote to impeach the former president. This led to Tshibaka's campaign receiving support from Trump.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Fox News.
