Pelosi Set To Be Reelected Speaker Despite House Losses

Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., broke barriers when she was the first woman elected speaker of the House in 2007. Democrats lost the majority in 2011, but she regained the gavel in 2019 when Democrats ousted the GOP in the 2018 midterms.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Nancy Pelosi is expected to be reelected speaker of the House by her caucus for the next session of Congress, marking what will be her fourth term with the gavel.

Pelosi, 80, does not face any challenge inside her caucus for her post, but she will also need to secure a simple majority — 218 Democratic votes — by the full House of Representatives in January to be sworn in again as speaker.

In 2019 several Democrats voted for someone other than her on the floor, but with a slimmer margin after the 2020 election, she cannot afford to lose more than a handful of votes from her caucus.