In the state’s first full ranked choice election, the same pool of voters elected candidates from across the political spectrum.

Alaska’s midterm elections were a win for moderate politics. A moderate Republican regained her US Senate seat. A moderate Democrat will continue to serve as Alaska’s lone Congressperson in the US House. A conservative Republican returned to the governor’s mansion, while the state legislature appears poised to form a bipartisan majority in the Senate, with a much smaller chance the House does the same.

In the state’s first regular ranked choice general election, the politically mixed results reflected the independent streak of Alaska voters. The pairing of the open primary with ranked choice voting yielded a group of winning candidates that, collectively, is moderate and independent, just like Alaska’s electorate. The system also helped to check extremist candidates; was easy for voters to understand; reduced the power of political parties and hyperpartisan primary voters; and ensured no candidate won without a majority in the final round.

Alaska Division of Elections director Gail Fenumiai presented the results live on KTOO 360TV and KTOO-FM. Voters approved Alaska’s election reforms in 2020, meaning Fenumiai and her agency have spent the last two years setting up the election system. Fenumiai choked up while thanking election workers before painstakingly walking viewers through the tabulations.

MURKOWSKI KEEPS US SENATE SEAT

Moderate Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski was reelected to the US Senate for the fourth time, beating out challengers Kelly Tshibaka, a Trump-backed Republican, and Pat Chesbro, a Democrat.

Murkowski barely led Tshibaka in first round results, 43.37 percent to 42.6 percent, then pulled ahead for the win in Round 3, after votes for Republican Buzz Kelley, who dropped out but was still on the ballot, and then Chesbro, were redistributed. Murkowski captured 54 percent of final round votes. It’s the first time Murkowski has crested the 50 percent mark in a race.

The US Senate race was always between Murkowski and Tshibaka, the latest iteration of a struggle between the moderate and extreme strains of Republican politics in Alaska. Murkowski’s insistence on holding the middle-ish ground even as her party shifted to the right has angered a large chunk of Alaska Republicans for at least a decade. In 2010, Joe Miller, a candidate from the Tea Party, the precursor to Trump-centric conservative politics, bested Murkowski in the Republican primary. Murkowski then ran and won a write-in campaign in the general election. She roundly defeated Miller in 2016.

In 2022, Trump and Alaska’s Republican Party shunned Murkowski, but without a closed primary, the party couldn’t keep her out of the general election. Murkowski and Tshibaka easily secured spots on the November ranked choice ballot. Chesbro and Kelley rounded out the top four.

Murkowski’s campaign went full-on bipartisan, a smart move given that she needed Democrats’ rankings, first or second, to win, and because, as she told the Anchorage Daily News, “that’s who I am.” She endorsed Peltola, spoke about her support of women’s right to choose, and touted the benefits to Alaska of the $1 trillion federal infrastructure bill, a key piece of President Joe Biden’s agenda that Murkowski helped hammer out with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. She also stuck to her commitment to develop Alaska’s oil and gas fields, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And she voted against Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which directed $369 billion to clean energy, health care, and other climate investments.

Tshibaka, a pro-Trump conservative, grew up in Alaska, but lived outside the state for most of her adult life. She spent much of her campaign reestablishing her Alaska cred. Murkowski had eaten muktuk? She was carrying some in her purse? Well, Tshibaka had made muktuk, according to a story in The New Yorker. (Muktuk is whale skin and blubber, ...