The House GOP's margin for error is shrinking to just one vote

Ouch. House Speaker Mike Johnson's ultra-skinny margin for error will soon shrink to just a single vote after his preferred candidate failed to lock down a critical vacant seat in a special election this week.

That vacant seat, incidentally, belonged to none other than Kevin McCarthy, who decided to make Johnson's already impossible life even more difficult by resigning after far-right renegades booted him from the speakership.

Yet both McCarthy and Johnson united behind Assemblyman Vince Fong in the race to fill that vacancy, though Fong left them both disappointed on Tuesday night when he fell far short of the majority needed to win McCarthy's seat without a second round of voting. As a result, Fong and a yet-to-be-determined opponent will face off again in late May.

And as a result of that, the GOP caucus in the House will, for the next two months, sit at just 218 members come Friday, when Colorado Republican Ken Buck heads to the exits. Democrats, meanwhile, currently hold 213 seats, but that total will increase to 214 at the end of next month when a special election for a safely blue seat in upstate New York concludes. And this is where the math comes in—math that's painful for Johnson, delightful for everyone else.