Voters Have Moved in Favor of DC and Puerto Rico Statehood
By Sean McElwee and John Ray
Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden supports statehood for Puerto Rico, and others have called on Democrats to support statehood for Washington DC to counterweight the persistent racial and partisan imbalance in the Senate. Early in the cycle, Data for Progress and YouGov Blue polled statehood for both Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. Recently, YouGov Blue updated those asks with a fresh round of results.
In both cases, we asked voters,
Would you support or oppose granting statehood, including full representation in Congress, to Washington, DC, currently a Federal District?
and
Would you support or oppose granting statehood, including full representation in Congress, to Puerto Rico, currently a US Commonwealth?
Initial results - at least to one long-time DC resident on this post - were partially discouraging. While an outright majority of voters supported Puerto Rico statehood, barely a third of voters supported DC statehood. Happily, in the cycle since, things have improved in both cases: Support for Puerto Rico statehood has increased slightly, and support for DC statehood has increased significantly.
In our initial polling (which came out of the field way back in January, 2019) We found that about 35 percent of voters supported DC statehood. In polling that finished fielding September 1, 2020, we found that about 43 percent of voters now favor DC statehood, with just 34 percent opposed. That increase was driven by substantial movement among Democrats, and marginal movement among political Independents.
In our initial data, about 47 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of Independents supported DC statehood (net positive levels of support overall, accounting for those who were unsure). Now, about 69 percent of Democrats and about 30 percent of Independents support DC statehood. Support for DC statehood fell slightly among Republicans, but was pretty negligible to begin with.
While movement in favor of Puerto Rico statehood was smaller, the initial level of support was higher. Last year, about 53 percent of voters supported Puerto Rico statehood. Now, closer to the end of this cycle, just over 54 percent do. While Republicans moved slightly away from the idea, Independent voters held steady and Democrats moved in its favor.
Democrats drove the upward movement. About 69 percent of Democrats supported Puerto Rico statehood at the beginning of last year, up to about 76 percent now. Neither Independents nor Republicans moved much, with Republicans drifting down slightly from 32 percent to 30 percent support for statehood.
To put a finer point on the movement we have observed, although Republicans have moved against statehood in both cases, this backsliding is limited almost entirely to self-reported ideological conservatives. Elsewhere, across the board, groups of voters of most any demographic background have begun to move in favor of statehood.
For example, white voters have moved in favor of DC statehood (+4 over the course of the cycle) as have older voters (+4 among those 65 or over). Young voters have moved +18 in favor of DC statehood. Movement among Black voters has been particularly dramatic, moving +29 percentage points in favor of DC statehood over the course of this cycle.
Viewed this way, while ideological conservatives have propped steady Republican opposition to DC statehood overall, other “traditional Republican strongholds” like rural-area voters, those without a college degree, and older voters have moved in favor of DC statehood.
Similarly, Black voters have moved +13 percentage points on net in favor of Puerto Rico statehood. But besides that, movement in favor of Puerto Rico statehood has been less dramatic over the course of the cycle. It began from a higher number to begin with, so this is not surprising.
What about voters in battleground states? While we didn’t start tracking state-level general electorates until the primary was over, YouGov Blue’s 2020 Core tracking project has regularly fielded swing Presidential and Senate state oversamples, and in a few recent iterations we asked the same questions of voters in some key swing states: Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, in the past couple of weeks.
In several of these states, the margins are slimmer than the national level of support for accepting DC or Puerto Rico as states. Across the board, however, support for admitting new states remains positive.
Floridians support DC statehood 43-35, and Puerto Rico statehood 56-26. Iowans are split on DC statehood 37-35, but support Puerto Rico statehood 52-26. Mainers support DC statehood 42-33 and Puerto Rico statehood 56-26. Michiganders are split on DC statehood 38-34 but support Puerto Rico statehood 49-29. North Carolinians are split on DC statehood 39-36 but support Puerto Rico statehood 42-28. Pennsylvanians support Dc statehood 39-34, and Puerto Rico statehood 56-24.
Data for Progress has been following the question of admitting new states for awhile, and has conducted novel research into the positive impact on the equity and fairness of the Republic that would be achieved by fighting for equal representation of all Americans. This data suggests that statehood’s time has come.
And on YouGov Blue's Medium page, we further explore the case of Florida, including an analysis showing Florida Latinos are strongly in favor of Puerto Rico statehood.
Methodology
Data for Progress and YouGov Blue fielded the first from January 25 to 29, 2019 on a representative sample of 1,282 US voters. This survey, part of the YouGov Blue Core tracking service, fielded from 8/26/20-9/1/20 on a sample of 1,025 US voters. The sample was weighted to be representative of Florida voters by age, race/ethnicity, sex, education, US Census region and 2016 Presidential vote choice.
The Florida sample fielded on the YouGov Blue core tracking service from 8/14-8/27 on a sample of 808 Florida registered voters. The Iowa sample fielded from 8/19-8/31 on a sample of 803 Iowa RVs. The Maine sample fielded from 8/19-8/30 on 420 Maine RVs. The Michigan sample fielded from 8/14-8/28 on 809 Michigan RVs. The North Carolina sample fielded from 8/14-8/27 on 813 North Carolina RVs. The Pennsylvania sample fielded from 8/14-8/26 on 801 Pennsylvania RVs.
Follow up with john.ray@yougov.com with further questions about this project.