Friday’s Speaker vote is shaping up to be a nailbiter as Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), the current House leader, is scrambling to keep the gavel for the next two years in the face of conservative critics furious with his leadership style.

The biennial vote has historically been a mundane affair — a rubber-stamp formalization of the Speakership post by members of the majority party who’ve already nominated their candidate and merely have to ratify that choice on the House floor to launch each new Congress. Johnson secured that nomination last month by unanimous consent of the GOP conference.

But the process has changed with the rise of the populist right, whose members have demanded more power in crafting legislation — and more ideological purity from Republican leaders in pursuit of those policy aims.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) clashed dramatically with his right flank two years ago, when he struggled for a long and torturous four days to secure the support of his conservative detractors — an extraordinary process that required 15 rounds of votes. (Nine months later, some of those same critics would boot McCarthy from power).

Johnson is facing a smaller group of internal doubters, and only one — Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — is vowing explicitly to oppose Johnson during Friday’s floor vote. Yet roughly a dozen other conservatives, most of them representing the far-right House Freedom Caucus, are grumbling over Johnson’s approach to leadership — particularly his willingness to partner with Democrats to adopt must-pass legislation like funding the government — and they had yet to commit their support in the final day before Friday’s vote.

Lending Johnson an enormous boost, President-elect Trump this week formally endorsed his Speakership bid, characterizing the Louisiana Republican as “a good, hard working, religious man.” Yet a number of conservatives have recently demonstrated a willingness to defy Trump’s advice on floor votes, adding another layer of uncertainty to the process governing Johnson’s fate.

Here are five things to watch as the events unfold during Friday’s vote.

The math is tough

Republicans have one of the slimmest House majorities in the history of Congress, filling 220 seats to the Democrats 215. And that advantage has been cut further by the resignation last month of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who won’t be replaced until Florida conducts a special election on April 1.

The math poses an enormous challenge for Johnson, who can afford to lose only one GOP........

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