Political Effects of Puerto Rican Statehood

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the results of Puerto Rico’s latest statehood referendum, and how residents of the island should have the final say on whether or not they become the fifty-first state. It was outside the scope of that post to discuss the effects that a bid for statehood would have on national politics, but I wanted to briefly address some of those political considerations here.

The greatest effect that Puerto Rican statehood would have on national politics would be in two areas—Congressional representation and the number of votes in the Electoral College. The population of the island, which currently stands at a little over 3.4 million according to the latest Census Bureau estimates, would presumably entitle the hypothetical state to either four or five U.S. representatives (when all states are ranked by population, Puerto Rico lands between Iowa, with four representatives, and Connecticut, with five). It would also receive two U.S. senators and, depending on the exact size of its congressional delegation, either six or seven electoral votes.

The most immediate result of statehood would be the reallocation of congressional seats. Whereas there is no statutory limit on the total membership of the U.S. Senate (or, for that matter, the number of votes in the Electoral College, which currently stands at 538), there is currently a cap on voting members of the House, set at 435. Unless Congress decided to raise that limit, or do away with it altogether (which wouldn’t be advisable, for practical reasons), several states would automatically lose a member of Congress to make way for Puerto Rico. As noted by the author of the Hill article linked above, the states most at risk, based on the 2010 redistricting process, would be California, Florida, Minnesota, Texas, and Washington.

Of course, which specific districts in those states would be consolidated, and how the maps would be redrawn, would be anyone’s guess until the process actually occurred. But it is a certainty that none of those states would take the prospect of losing congressional representation particularly well.

The partisan makeup of the new state’s congressional delegation—as well as the island’s partisan tendencies in presidential elections—would be the other major question with regard to the political effects of statehood. Here as well, those effects are difficult to predict. Puerto Ricans in the United States are known for their tendency to vote Democratic, but island politics are more often based around local parties such as the PNP and PPD. Many politicians also choose to affiliate themselves with the mainline Democratic and Republican parties, and based on this Democrats would start out with a significant advantage in island-wide elections, as well as in many of the new congressional districts (currently, the governor and all three nonvoting representatives in Congress are Democrats). But several Republican-affiliated candidates have also found success in recent years, at both the gubernatorial level and in races for the several at-large seats in the legislature, indicating that the island would couldn’t be counted on to vote as a heavily partisan block.

In short, none of the very real effects of admitting Puerto Rico as the fifty-first state can be known for sure, until that day comes (if it ever does). But two things are a certainty: the substantive impact on national politics will be both noticeable and permanent, and that impact will be sure to become a key factor in any debate over the formal admittance of Puerto Rico into the Union.