More than two weeks after the midterm elections, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) (COL ’80), was declared winner of a fiercely contested re-election bid for her senatorial seat on Wednesday.

Should Murkowski’s victory hold, Murkowski will be the first candidate to win a senatorial election off a runoff campaign since Strom Thurmond of South Carolina in 1954. The Associated Press called the election for Murkowski after ballot workers manually recounted more than 100,000 of the write-in votes. With less than 1,000 votes left to recount as of press time, Murkowski is leading the election by 10,400, according to The New York Times, earning 98 percent of the write-in votes.

urkowski lost the Republican primary for the seat to Joe Miller, a Tea Party candidate endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Despite losing the primary, Murkowski decided to run for re-election as a write-in candidate in the general election.

For this election and its recount, the status of misspelled ballots became crucial to Murkowski’s success. Alaska law states that write-in candidate’s name on a ballot must be “as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy.” Currently, ballots that have slight variations or misspellings of Murkowski’s name are included in her total winning margin. Miller has filed a federal lawsuit challenging 8,153 ballots.

At this point in the counting, the challenge most likely will not matter. Even if the disputed ballots are thrown out, Murkowski would still lead the count. In addition, recent Alaskan Supreme Court rulings have emphasized “voter intent” when deciding to apportion write-in votes, allowing some leeway and possibly making Miller’s lawsuit moot.

iller’s campaign, however, argued that misspelled votes should not be counted toward Murkowski’s campaign, as many of the misspelled votes may have been protest votes against Murkowski.

Neither the Miller nor the Murkowski campaign has commented on the AP report. Miller has not officially conceded the race to Murkowski.

urkowski would join five other Georgetown alumni in the Senate if she is officially determined to be the winner.

Hoya Staff Writer Glenn Russo contributed to this report.

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