Democrats face a structural problem in national politics: A good-sized majority of American voters support the party, but that currently translates into a tenuous hold on government. One straightforward solution—some say—is to restructure things by adding more states. Numerousleft-leaninganalysts, looking at the long-term disadvantages Democrats face in the House and even more so the Senate, where sparsely populated, rural, red areas are overrepresented, have concluded that it is imperative that the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, presumably blue, be added as states as soon as possible. Advertisement “If we implemented D.C. and Puerto Rican statehood and passed redistricting reform, that would roughly triple our chance of holding the House in 2022 and roughly the same in the Senate,” polling expert David Shor told New York magazine in a recent interview. Democratic voters don’t need convincing: 76 percent of them now support Puerto Rico statehood, according to a recent Data for Progress poll, a 7 percentage point increase since last year. President Joe Biden has been vague but certainly does not seem opposed to the idea. Even Joe Manchin, the Senate’s swing vote and previously a Puerto Rico statehood skeptic, now at least says he’s “open” to the idea. (He’s not as open-minded about D.C.)