Kamala Harris with the US and Puerto Rico flags, and a Puerto Rico map silhouette. Image credit: Composite image by Pasquines
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correctly identify the poll as a 2024 survey conducted by Gaither.
The question of Puerto Rico’s political status has been debated for more than a century without resolution. Former Vice President Kamala Harris’s recent public statements have pushed that debate back into the national spotlight—and this time, the partisan landscape around it looks different from any point in recent memory.
Puerto Rico has been a United States territory since 1898, and its more than 3.2 million residents are United States citizens who cannot vote in presidential elections and have no voting representation in Congress. Support for statehood among national political figures is nothing new: presidents from both parties have expressed openness to the idea over the decades. President Barack Obama visited Puerto Rico in 2011—the first sitting president to do so since John F. Kennedy—and committed to supporting a process by which Puerto Ricans could determine their own political future, including statehood as an option. President Joe Biden went further, stating in 2020 that he believed “statehood would be the most effective means of ensuring that residents of Puerto Rico are treated equally,” and his administration endorsed the Puerto Rico Status Act, which would have provided a binding congressional vehicle for the islands to choose among statehood, independence, and free association.
What shifted dramatically is the Republican position. Statehood for Puerto Rico was once a bipartisan cause—Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush all expressed support for it at various points. But under President Donald Trump, the Republican Party has moved toward firm opposition. Trump called statehood an “absolute no” during his first term and has continued to oppose it. In November 2025, Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson called Puerto Rico statehood “highly destructive” and “very damaging” to the United States, and the Republican Party dropped statehood for Puerto Rico from its national platform ahead of the 2024 election cycle. The driving logic is openly electoral: Republicans have long argued that Puerto Rico, if admitted as a state, would reliably favor Democratic candidates and shift the balance of power in the Senate.
It is against that backdrop that Harris’s statements carry particular weight. At an event with the organization Win with Black Women—held in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which limited protections for minority voting districts—Harris called for a broad rethinking of democratic structures. “Let’s talk about statehood for Puerto Rico and DC,” she said, framing it alongside Electoral College reform and Supreme Court expansion as part of what she called a “no bad ideas brainstorm” for Democrats.
She returned to the topic in a July 10, 2026 Substack post, arguing that Democrats should put “granting statehood to Washington DC and Puerto Rico” on the table as a long-term strategy to combat threats to voting rights and democratic participation, framing statehood as a way to “ensure power stays with the people.”
The Puerto Rico Democrats responded approvingly. “It is time to end second-class citizenship, fight for full voting rights, and champion real democracy from San Juan to Washington, DC. Let’s make our voices count!” the organization posted on X.
The polling landscape suggests Harris’s position reflects broad public sentiment. A YouGov survey conducted shortly before the 2024 election found that 79% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans supported statehood for Puerto Rico, with only 29% of Republicans opposed—making statehood the most popular status option across both parties. A 2024 poll conducted by Gaither and cited by PR51st, a pro-statehood advocacy organization, found that 73% of voters surveyed would choose statehood over independence when given a binary choice between the two options. Puerto Ricans have voted in favor of statehood in referenda in 2012, 2017, 2020, and 2024.
What Harris’s statements represent in concrete legislative terms remains unclear. Statehood for Puerto Rico would require an act of Congress, and with Republicans controlling the federal legislative agenda and the party’s leadership firmly opposed, near-term action is unlikely. The change this time is the visibility and urgency of the conversation—and the degree to which a major national political figure is treating Puerto Rico statehood not as an abstract ideal but as a specific, nameable Democratic priority.
Aarav Pinge contributed to this report.
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She has learned absolutely nothing