Lots of action in the last 20 minutes or so, so let’s go ahead and start a fresh thread.
David Dayen: listed 215 yes votes earlier, but did not account for Paul Kanjorski or Joe Donnelly, who have announced their intentions to vote for the bill in the last half-hour or so. That would bring his count to 217. Dayen’s total does include Bobby Rush, who still insisted on calling himself undecided as of this morning and to my knowledge has yet to revise that position. So call it 216 if you want to be conservative.
New York Times: This appears to be the most up-to-date count. They list 218 yes votes, counting Rush, or 217 without him.
CBS News: They also list 216 yes votes, not counting Rush — but also not counting Kanjorski. So this should be read as 217.
The Hill: lists 214 yes votes — but three of their four undecideds — Kanjorski, Cooper, Sanchez — have since come out in favor of the bill, which would bring their total to 217 as well.
[UPDATED] Washington Post: 216, not counting Rush, but they’ve also not yet counted Sanchez — so this is also 217.
Lastly, the White House has said it expects to get about 220 yes votes. That’s my best guess too, although there will be two different dynamics pulling on legislators once the roll call is taken. On the one hand, if passage looks assured, anybody who had an objection to the bill will have the opportunity to vote against it without seeming to kill it; on the other hand, some other legislators might want to be on the “right side of history”, yadda yadda, and will get caught up in the momentum. It still wouldn’t completely surprise me if representatives who would suffer little electoral consequence from voting no — such as John Tanner, who is retiring, Mike Arcuri, who is highly vulnerable to a primary challenge, or Stephen Lynch, who comes from a quite liberal district, wind up voting yes on the bill after all. The vote of the lone Republican to support the bill in November, Joseph Cao, could also come back into play now that a compromise on abortion language has been reached. But there could also be one or two surprise nos.