Our Data on Every Member Whose Vote Changed During the House Speaker Saga
If you didn’t watch C-SPAN this week, you missed out. The speaker of the House election turned into some of the most thrilling television on cable news in years. After 15 rounds of voting – the most since before the Civil War – the election was resolved very early on Saturday morning.. The holdouts opposing Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy switched from voting against him to voting “present” and the new speaker (and House members) were finally sworn in.
In an early prescient piece from a month ago, we previewed the speaker’s race and outlined why Kevin McCarthy was in trouble. But the amount of drama on the floor was truly unlike anything else we had ever seen. Shady whisperings across party lines, a member lunging at another and having to be restrained, and some concessions made by McCarthy that may ultimately cripple both his speakership and the House of Representatives in the 118th Congress.
We covered the speaker’s race intensively on our social media channels, providing live tracking of the holdouts, vote switchers, who missed each round, and where the math stood. For those of you who don’t follow the site on Twitter, here’s what you missed:
Take note this includes every anomaly, including two Republicans who – despite backing McCarthy the entire time – were briefly absent for family (Wesley Hunt of Texas) and medical (Ken Buck, of Colorado) reasons, and one Democrat (David Trone of Maryland) who missed the 12th round due to a surgery. Trone is the only Democrat whose attendance or vote wavered during the marathon ordeal; every other member listed in the left column is a Republican.
We’ve flagged the major moments and flips as well – of which ballots 12 through 15 were the most exciting – and every person for whom a vote was cast throughout the process (former New York Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin and former President Donald Trump, to name a couple).
We also kept track of who nominated the candidates for speaker on each round (though many people cast votes across the rounds for those who were not officially nominated) for anyone curious about that. The Republicans had a different member nominate McCarthy each time, while the Democrats largely relied on their caucus chair, California Congressman Pete Aguilar, to nominate their leader, New Yorker Hakeem Jeffries, each round:
Enjoy our data, and thanks to those of you who spent this week watching the rounds with us. Given all the concessions made by McCarthy, you may be hearing from us sooner rather than later if the weak coalition of Republicans behind him (or not actively voting against him) falls apart. There’s a chance we have to go through this all over again, but count on it that we’ll be there!