MR Newt Gingrich's battle to save his job as Speaker of the House of Representatives will be decided today when the votes of the 435 members are counted.
A cloud has hung over Mr Gingrich's campaign to be re elected Speaker of the 105th Congress since he admitted last month that he had "brought discredit" to the House.
The Republican members of the House seemed confident last night that they could ensure Mr Gingrich's re election after they had heard his statement in a closed session of the Republican conference.
If successful, Mr Gingrich (53) would be the first Republican Speaker to be re elected in nearly 70 years.
Only two of the 227 Republicans in the House have said publicly that they will not vote for him. If 20 Republicans abstained, Mr Gingrich would fail to be reelected.
The Speaker is one of the most powerful posts in US public life and is second in succession to the President in case of an emergency, after the vice president.
The Democratic minority led by the chief whip, Mr David Bonior, has been campaigning to make Mr Gingrich withdraw his name from the contest for Speaker or to postpone a decision until the House Ethics Committee has reported on the inquiry into the violations now admitted by the outgoing Speaker.
For over a year, the committee has been investigating charges that Mr Gingrich violated House rule though the funding of a college course he used to teach. On December 21st last, Mr Gingrich admitted to an ethics panel that he had broken tax deduction rules and that he had given untrue information, but pleaded that he had done so inadvertently.
The full committee will recommend an appropriate punishment to the full House later this month. It is expected to be a reprimand which would not require Mr Gingrich to step down.
Democrats say that such a reprimand will weaken Mr Gingrich's authority in the new Congress. Privately, a number of Republicans would prefer to postpone the vote on the post of Speaker until after the Ethics Committee has, given its ruling.
Democrats are still resentful of the role played by Mr Gingrich in forcing the resignation of Democratic Speaker, Mr Jim "Wright, in 1989 over corruption charges.