Each new session of the House of Representatives opens with the election of the Speaker. Congressional rules require that a Speaker be in place to drive the business of the House. The naming of that Speaker has, for the vast majority of the history of the country, been a formality because the majority party knows in advance who the Speaker will be and the necessary vote of approval is ceremonial. Because of the nature of that vote, it usually takes just a small amount of time, with the Speaker being elected on the first ballot needed to do so, as one of the first things that the new House does. Even the swearing-in of other Representatives cannot be done until the Speaker is elected because the Speaker is the one who does that swearing-in.

This time around, nearly two dozen ultra-conservative Republicans refused to vote for McCarthy as Speaker, instead voting for other members of the House. As the ballots continued, McCarthy acquiesced to more and more of the holdouts' requests, including agreeing to unlimited amendments to bills, committing to considering some of the holdouts for plum positions on congressional committees, and allowing what amounts to a Parliament-equivalent of no confidence in the Speaker if just one Representative calls for it.

According to House records, McCarthy's election was the 15th such time that more than one ballot was needed to elect the Speaker. Some were more contentious than others.

The last time it happened, in 1923, Frederick Gillett (R-Mass.) needed nine ballots before he won re-election as Speaker. (He had been elected in 1919 and then re-elected in 1921.) The Republican Party kept its majority in the Congressional elections of 1922, but Progressive Republicans refused to support Gillett's continuation as Speaker until the party at large agreed to some of the Progressives' reforms. The ninth ballot reaffirmed him as Speaker.

The need for more than one ballot was not unheard of in the early days of Congress. Votes in the 6th Congress (1799) and 11th Congress (1809) went to the second ballot before electing Theodore Sedgwick (F-Mass.) and Democratic-Republican Joseph Varnum (D-R-Mass.), respectively; and votes in the 3rd Congress (1793) and 9th Congress (1805) went to the third ballot before electing Frederick Muhlenberg (F-Penn.) and Nathaniel Macon (D-N.C.), respectively.

The election of Democratic-Republican John Taylor in the 16th Congress (1819) required 22 ballots. New York's only Speaker, Taylor succeeded the immensely popular Henry Clay. Overshadowing the business of the 16th Congress was the slavery issue, and Taylor's support of the admission of Missouri as a non-slave state cost him support with many Southern members of his party. Taylor served one term as Speaker and won election to that office again six years later, again succeeding Clay; in the 1825 affair (19th Congress), Taylor needed two ballots to secure the Speaker's chair.

In between those two ballot adventures was the Speakership candidacy of Philip Barbour, a Virginia Democratic-Republican. In 1821 (17th Congress), he needed 12 ballots to secure the post, in the process defeating Taylor, who had run again. Barbour served a single term as Speaker and won re-election to the House four more times, leaving in 1830. A lawyer, he won nomination to a Virginia U.S. District Court and then, in 1836, accepted nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court (becoming the only person in American history to serve both as Speaker of the House and as a member of the high court).

In the 23rd Congress (1833), Kentucky Whig John Bell won election to be Speaker of the House, prevailing on the 10th ballot in defeating a strong challenge from future President James K. Polk. Bell lost out to Polk the next time around, continued to serve in the House, later served in the Senate, and ran for President in 1860, on the Constitutional Union ticket.

Another Whig Party member, Robert Hunter of Virginia, won election as Speaker of the House in 1839 (26th Congress), on the 11th ballot. At 29, he was (and still is) the youngest ever Speaker. He served one term, losing out on re-election to fellow Whig John White.

The relatively sedate third ballot election of Robert Winthrop (Whig-Mass.) in the 30th Congress (1847) preceded the chaotic Speaker election of 1849 (31st Congress), which ended up with Georgia Democrat Howell Cobb getting the top job in the House on the 63rd ballot. By that time, the tensions over slavery had reached a fever pitch and he emerged from the fray as a compromise candidate. In his one term as Speaker, he oversaw the passage of the Compromise of 1850.

As it happened, the House voted in 1849 that a plurality could elect the Speaker; this is how Cobb won through. The same thing happened in 1854, when the procedure was much more drawn out.

Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts had won election to Congress in 1853 as a member of the Know-Nothing Party. In the next election, he affiliated himself with the newly formed Republican Party, and won election again. He was one of 21 Representatives-elect who declared their candidacy to be Speaker in the 34th Congress (1855). The bitterly divided House spent two months deciding who its Speaker would be, eventually again deciding that a plurality would rule the day. In the end, Banks edged William Aiken of South Carolina by just three votes and claimed the Speakership. It happened on the 133rd ballot. Banks served one term. (The Democratic Party won a majority in the House in 1856 and chose (without drama) James Orr of South Carolina as Speaker.)

The last contentious Speaker election of the 19th Century occurred the very next time, as William Pennington, a Republican from New Jersey, emerged after the 44th ballot as the victor in the 36th Congress (1859). His election was also notable in that it was in his first term in Congress. (Only Henry Clay in 1811 had achieved that feat; it has not been duplicated.) Pennington was, by the time of his election to Congress, a well-known figure, having served in the New Jersey General Assembly and as his state's governor. He was not re-elected Speaker; in fact, he lost his House re-election bid.