Kevin McCarthy still didn’t win election as Speaker of the House. But at least on the twelfth ballot, McCarthy started moving in that direction for the first time since balloting began on Tuesday.

Since that first ballot, McCarthy had drifted downward from 203 to 201 votes while the threshold remained 218. This time, however, several of the Freedom Caucus dissidents flipped their votes to the House GOP leader. That included a double-flip from the dissidents’ one-time alternative:

At this time, Byron Donalds is the only House Republican who has gone from voting YES on McCarthy to NO on McCarthy and back to YES on McCarthy across these 12 ballots.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 6, 2023

Another dissenter, Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna, flipped but expressed it as conditional support:

Luna for McCarthy "pending negotiations in good faith"

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) January 6, 2023

Illinois’ Mary Miller appeared to make the same conditional expression of support for McCarthy. Keith Self declared, “We are making progress!” before flipping to McCarthy. That much was already evident, as McCarthy ended up flipping fourteen of the 21 holdouts and getting his highest vote total by far this week. It’s also the first time that McCarthy managed to outpoll Hakeem Jeffries, 214-211.

What next? McCarthy will likely call for another adjournment to get the remaining holdouts to flip. Aaron Blake identifies the most likely to move:

With 7 McCarthy holdouts left, the next ones to watch would be Boebert, Crane, Harris and Rosendale.

The most solid, longstanding Never-Kevins are 3: Biggs, Gaetz and Good.

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) January 6, 2023

The tenor of those negotiations will be crucial. Some of these flips specifically cited good faith in changing their votes, and any attempt to steamroll the remaining seven could lose those late flippers.

The big takeaway from this is that the negotiations did matter, and that most of these votes are winnable. This also means that some of this drama could have been avoided with some good-faith negotiations before the new session of Congress officially opened, too, but better late than never, I suppose. This momentum reduces the options for Democrats and moderate Republicans to try a “consensus” speakership, and it makes it tougher on the remaining holdouts to keep blocking the natural end to the standoff.

Stay tuned for more developments today.

Update: The final tally was 213, not 214. At least two Republicans were absent — Ken Buck and Wesley Hunt. We’re going directly into a thirteenth ballot, so we’ll watch how this unfolds as well. One has to wonder whether some of the other holdouts have signaled that they plan to fold on this round.

Update: This is an interesting development:

MCCARTHY opponents do not nominate anyone for speaker this time around.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 6, 2023

That didn’t stop Never Kevin members Andy Biggs and Lauren Boebert from casting their votes for Jim Jordan, but it might indicate some flagging interest among the other holdouts.

Update: The fifteenth flip of the day to McCarthy:

ANDY HARRIS of Maryland has flipped, marking McCarthy's 15th flip of the day.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 6, 2023

Update: McCarthy still came up short in the 13th ballot, but again he beat Jeffries and again appeared to hit 214 votes. The GOP may want to try for an adjournment at this point to conduct one-on-one negotiations with the remaining holdouts.

Update: Looks like that is what will happen:

House Republicans will adjourn until 10 p.m. tonight. they believe they have the votes.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 6, 2023

They should have Buck and Hunt back in the Beltway by this evening, plus this gives McCarthy and his allies a little more time for negotiation.