Lisa Murkowski wins Alaska Senate seat, defeating Trump-backed challenger

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, beat challenger Kelly Tshibaka to secure her fourth full Senate term.

Murkowski is considered to be one of the more centrist Republican voices in Congress, and her win could help President Joe Biden pass his agenda as well as extend her clout in the closely divided Senate.

Neither Murkowski nor Tshibaka, the top two candidates in the four-person race, reached the 50% threshold needed for an outright win, which meant the winner was decided by ranked choice tabulation that was announced on Wednesday.

Under that system, instead of picking a single candidate for office, Alaskan voters were allowed to rank whom they wanted to fill a particular position. In the first round of counting, if no candidate makes it to the 50% mark, it goes to a second round, which starts with the candidate who got the fewest votes in the first round being eliminated. If the eliminated candidate was a voter's top pick, their next choice would get their vote in the round. This continued until Murkowski was declared the winner. She defeated Tshibaka 54% to 46%.

Murkowski has held the Alaska Senate seat since 1981. Before Murkowski, who was first elected in 2002, her father, Frank, had served as Alaska's senator.