In the United States Congress, the House of Representatives (the bigger chamber), elects a Speaker during the first session of every new Congress. The Speaker is second in the line of presidential succession after the vice president. They are in charge of the organization of debate and House accounting. Typically, although not a constitutional rule, the Speaker is a member of the majority party. They often act as a spokesperson for the party and lead discussions in a manner that benefits their party’s interests. 

The Speaker requires a simple majority of all present and voting members of the House. Currently, the House of Representatives holds 435 members representing all fifty states. Assuming all members are voting, a Speaker would only need 218 votes. Representatives can abstain from voting, which lowers the required majority to be elected. Because the Speaker is standardly a majority party member, earning a simple majority vote is seldom a problem. The Speaker is a pillar of strength and cohesion for the majority party, and thus they are often unanimously voted in by their party.

The current House of Representatives did not follow precedent in the recent Speaker election. The 2022 midterm elections yielded a Republican majority in the House. The Republican party has been dealing with internal debate following the Trump era, and members disagree about the future of their party. The majority of Republican representatives, both new and incumbent, planned to elect longtime Congressman Kevin McCarthy. However, a small sect of the Republican party, mostly members of the ultraconservative “Freedom Caucus,” decided to oppose McCarthy’s election due to worries that he would make too many concessions to the Democrats. These nineteen holdout voters forced fifteen rounds of votes for the Speaker. The majority group refused to name another nominee, and the split sect refused to vote for McCarthy, and thus a standoff ensued for fifteen long, full-House votes. 

Ultimately, the majority Republican party began making concessions to the sect, not in whom they elected, but in what the Speaker intended to do with his position. McCarthy promised a 23% national sales tax and to enforce and support abortion restrictions. The twenty anti-McCarthy voters have yet to be fully transparent about their deals with the majority of their party, so the public is unclear exactly what convinced the sect to change their minds. 

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats cohesively voted for Hakeem Jefferies for all fifteen votes. The 212 votes given to Jeffries did not constitute a simple majority any of those times.

Days after Congress planned to open, the final vote in the small hours of January 7th saw a majority go to Kevin McCarthy, with enough of the small sect voting either present or for McCarthy to have him elected. The House votes each took about an hour, as every representative had to say their vote out loud to the recorder, and by the fifteenth round, members were eager to have the business settled. Claps came from both sides of the aisle, although muted amongst Democrats, as McCarthy was finally sworn in as Speaker, and other business could finally be pursued.

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