> All that aside, my rough estimate is that 90% of the Continental US interest in PR statehood is motivated by political calculus in the Senate and Electoral College. If PR was a red state instead of solid blue, I'd sincerely doubt you'd see statehood regularly discussed at the top of /r/politics.

Probably, but that's also been the case for basically every state ever admitted to the union. Remember when the US used to consider whether a state was slave for free before admission?

Even the statehood of Hawaii was politically charged. People genuinely feared the kind of people Hawaiian would send as representatives. Including, but not limited to Communists and anti-segregationists.

Alaska was opposed on the grounds that it would be a welfare state and that it would add a bunch of democrats to Congress.