Puerto Rico Just Set a Record for Statehood Support. Congress Still Hasn't Acted.

Puerto Rico just recorded its highest-ever statehood support in a real vote

On November 5, 2024, Puerto Rico held its seventh status referendum, and statehood won a majority for the fourth time this century, with 58.61% of the vote (some sources report 56.8% depending on how blank/invalid ballots are counted in the denominator), a record high for the statehood movement. This followed the 2020 referendum, where statehood won a narrower 52.52% to 47.48% majority. Turnout was approximately 57%, comparable to general election turnout, despite boycott calls from some political factions.

These referenda remain non-binding. Regardless of the outcome, the Territorial Clause of the Constitution requires actual congressional action to change Puerto Rico's status, meaning no referendum result, however decisive, automatically changes anything without Congress separately voting to admit Puerto Rico as a state.

The Puerto Rico Status Act represents the most serious recent legislative attempt

The Puerto Rico Status Act (introduced as H.R. 2757 and S. 3231 in the 118th Congress) would have established a binding plebiscite offering voters a choice between statehood, independence, or "sovereignty in free association" with the United States, with international election observers and bilingual voter education materials. If statehood won, the bill specified the President would issue a proclamation admitting Puerto Rico as a state within one year of certified results. The House passed an earlier version of similar legislation in 2022, but it did not advance in the Senate, and the more recent version has not passed either chamber as of the most current tracking.

D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood are genuinely different cases, despite often being discussed together

• Washington, D.C. voted approximately 90% for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, making it overwhelmingly, consistently Democratic-leaning, a political reality that shapes much of the partisan debate over D.C. statehood specifically
• Puerto Rico's politics are considerably more genuinely competitive: the island elected Jenniffer González-Colón, a Republican-affiliated governor, alongside its most recent pro-statehood referendum majority, meaning Puerto Rican statehood doesn't carry the same predictable partisan implication that D.C. statehood does
• Puerto Rico's statehood movement has specifically organized public demonstrations supporting increased U.S. military deployment on the island, part of a broader strategic engagement effort, including hosting advocacy events like the October 2025 Florida Equality Summit aimed at building mainland political pressure
• A February 2026 Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll found Puerto Rico statehood polls as more broadly plausible to mainland voters specifically because of this bipartisan political reality, combined with the repeated, escalating referendum mandate, compared to other structural reform proposals tested in the same survey

D.C. statehood faces a different, more purely partisan political dynamic

Unlike Puerto Rico, D.C. statehood legislation has advanced further in the House (passing in 2020 and again in 2021) but has not overcome Senate opposition, where it would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster (or unified Democratic control plus a change to filibuster rules) given essentially unanimous Republican opposition tied directly to the district's overwhelming Democratic voting pattern. This makes D.C.'s path structurally different from Puerto Rico's: the core obstacle for D.C. is more purely a partisan calculation about future Senate composition, while Puerto Rico's obstacle is more about the sheer scale of legislative attention required for a genuinely large-scale territorial admission with significant fiscal and administrative implications.

The core disagreement

Statehood supporters for both D.C. and Puerto Rico generally argue that American citizens living in either place lack full voting representation in Congress despite paying federal taxes and serving in the military, a basic democratic representation argument, and point to Puerto Rico's repeated, strengthening referendum mandates as evidence of genuine self-determination being ignored by Congress. Opponents generally argue, particularly regarding D.C., that admitting a jurisdiction this small and this politically one-sided as a state would be an unprecedented partisan maneuver rather than a neutral democratic reform, while Puerto Rico-specific skepticism more often centers on the island's financial situation (including a lengthy bankruptcy-style debt restructuring process completed in recent years) and questions about the practical transition process. Both cases share the same fundamental procedural reality: no matter how referenda turn out, or how strong public argument runs on either side, only an actual act of Congress can change either jurisdiction's status.