Not unless there's a Republican-friendly territory set to adopt statehood as well to balance out PR (which would almost certainly favor Democrats). Such as how they worked it out with Hawaii/Alaska in 1959.

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the Popular Democratic Party guy won although the PDP lost the status vote. amazing. THe independence party candidate received less than 3% which is even less than their typical 4%.

46% said they wanted no change.

61% said IF there is change, they want statehood. That does not neccessarily mean that a majority want statehood.

What is needed now is a straight up referendum on Statehood versus status quo.

and NOT include the status quo.

If the referendum is between statehood vs. "commonwealth" the Popular Democratic Party will define the status quo option as the status they want, not the actual status of PR as a territory. They will claim the commonwealth option is a sovereign PR with US citizenship, US federal law is not applicable to the island unless they want it to apply, no US federal court jurisdiction, but US funding and services would still continue to flow into the island.

I believe there was vote in the early 90s on statehood, commonwealth, and independence. Commonwealth won because they defined it the way they want their status to be as described above. There will never be a resolution on PR status unless the US Congress imposes a binding referendum. Congress won't do it though.

Regarding yesterday's referendum, it was not an accident it was designed this way.

as you would still have people who would rather be the same.

I think since statehood was the higher vote getter, you start with "Should we go for statehood".

If that then fails, in a separate election you go with "should we go for independence".

Voting NO to statehood would not lead to independence, and it would not change the existing relationship. However, if you had a vote with statehood or independence, it has to be one or the other and statehood would win.

I still don't understand why, though, the Commonwealth party favored the yes option which defines PR as a territory. It seems the option in part 2 as a free associated state is in line with their 60 year old story of PR is not really a territory. The only thing I can think of is they simply don't want to keep reopening this can of worms. They are actually fine with the territorial status, don't want to change it, but don't want to actually admit it is US colony either.

By the way, the independentistas position is have a vote between statehood and independence which statehood would win. However, Congress would never actually grant statehood, so they would get independence by default.




here is the ballot:
http://www.voxxi.com/confusion-plebiscite-puerto-rico/

I would love to welcome Puerto Rico as a new state. Who wouldn't want to include such a beautiful country and people?