Story highlights Paul Ryan needs 218 votes Tuesday to remain House speaker

Nancy Pelosi is expected to be re-elected House minority leader

Washington (CNN) Paul Ryan was easily re-elected Speaker of the House of the 115th Congress, following a vote in the chamber Tuesday.

Only one Republican member defected -- Kentucky Republican Rep. Tom Massie, who is a frequent critic of the speaker, voted for Rep. Daniel Webster.

On the Democratic side, Nancy Pelosi was re-elected Minority Leader with only four of her colleagues voting for someone else for the top the Democratic post, following a year that saw both parties questioning their congressional leadership.

Ryan was re-elected by the House Republican conference in November to serve a second term as speaker of the House. And after a tumultuous first year in the top leadership spot -- a job he was elected to after then-Speaker John Boehner abruptly resigned -- Ryan clashed with both conservatives on the right of the conference and with then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

But a lot has changed since then. Trump's 2016 election win helped unite the Republican Party while Democrats are still trying to figure what went wrong.

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