Two changes to election law will help her keep her seat in 2022.
Two changes to election law will help her keep her seat in 2022.
A mong the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump at his second impeachment trial, six won’t have to face voters for quite some time: One is up for reelection in 2024 (Mitt Romney), three are up in 2026 (Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Ben Sasse), and two are retiring (Richard Burr and Pat Toomey). Only one Republican who voted to convict Donald Trump is up for reelection in 2022: Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
“If I can’t say what I believe that our president should stand for, then why should I ask Alaskans to stand with me?” Murkowski said in an interview with Politico after the vote. “This was consequential on many levels, but I cannot allow the significance of my vote, to be devalued by whether or not I feel that this is helpful for my political ambitions.”
But at the moment it seems unlikely that Murkowski will pay much of a price at the polls in 2022. In 2010, conservative Joe Miller defeated her in the Republican primary, but Murkowski held on to her seat by running a write-in campaign and appealing to moderates and independents in the general election.
Two changes to Alaska election law enacted via referendum in November 2020 will make it easier for Murkowski to keep her seat in 2022. First, Alaska got rid of partisan primaries and established an open primary in which the top four primary candidates will compete in the general election. Second, in the general election, there will be ranked-choice voting. Ballotpedia has the details:
A candidate needs a simple majority of the vote (50%+1) to be declared the winner of an election. If no candidate wins a simple majority of the vote, the candidate with the fewest votes would be eliminated. People who voted for that candidate as their first choice would have their votes redistributed to their second choice. The tabulation process would continue as rounds until there are two candidates remaining, and the candidate with the greatest number of votes would be declared the winner.
Add it all up, and at the moment it’s hard to see Murkowski losing in 2022. In 2016, she won 44.5 percent of the vote, and Joe Miller (running that year on the Libertarian ticket) came in second with 29.2 percent of the vote. An independent came in third with 13.3 percent and the Democrat came in fourth with 11.6 percent.
Since 2016, Murkowski has bucked her party on a number of issues. She declined to vote for Trump or the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020 (just as she had done in 2016). She voted against convicting Trump during his first impeachment trial but for conviction at the second trial. She further angered Republicans with her vote against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. “I can see 2022 from my house,” Sarah Palin tweeted in response to the Kavanaugh vote. In 2020, Murkowski voted against holding a vote on the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett before the November election, despite ultimately voting for Barrett’s confirmation. She opposes nuking the filibuster and has pledged to stay a member of the Republican caucus, which gives Alaska voters who want a check on Democrats in 2022 some reassurance.
It’s been a delicate dance for Murkowski, but if she simply finishes first or second place in the first round of balloting in 2022, she’ll very likely keep her seat.