How is a US territory different than a state?
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Statehood comes with a number of privileges territories don’t. Basically, you get to participate in elections. Each state, regardless of size, gets 2 senators. You also get a certain amount of representatives in congress which is determined by your state’s population. Whatever that number is, you also get the same number of electors in the electoral college, which are effectively “points” in the presidential election. Territories don’t get any of that. It’s citizens are US citizens so they get the protections and entitlements of other citizens but they don’t get to vote in federal elections.
It used to be that territories were what would eventually become states.
Most of the US states that exist today were US territories for a while as they were settled and then became states.
For example in 1907 the Territory of Oklahoma became the state of Oklahoma. It was the last territory in the contiguous United States to become a state.
In 1959 the territories of Alaska and Hawaii became states.
Since then none of the remaining territories have become states.
Of the five inhabited US territories, four have a smaller population than any state, but Puerto Rico the most populous territory has more people living there the two fifths of the US states.
So why keep them as territories and not make them states?
Territories have more limited self-rule than states and parts of the constitution don’t apply to them and they aren’t allowed to vote in presidential elections, but the people who live there are full US citizens and if they move to a state they can vote in elections they can’t vote in back home.
The five remaining inhabited territories are all islands away from the mainland which affects their economy (but that didn’t stop Hawaii). They are also mainly populated by non-white people. There are racists and political implications to making Puerto Rico a full state and giving the people living their the rights to vote in presidential elections and the like.
There are also other reasons, like taxes and certain exceptions to some laws, but the politics are the elephant in the room.
In addition to the five territories with people living on them: Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in the North Pacific Ocean, and American Samoa, the US also has a bunch of islands with no permanent population that it considers its territories. Many of these uninhabited islands were last relevant during WWII like Midway.
The US originally claimed a bunch of islands around the world as theirs during the mid 1800s because they were full of birdshit and that was an important and valuable resource at the time. Later islands were used to resupply ships and as landing strips for planes.
There are also a number of inhabited islands that the US controlled and administered as sort of colonies in the wake of WWII and which have now become mostly independent countries in a Compact of Free Association with the US which the US in some respect still treats like as if they were part of the US.
The US also used to control the are around the panama canal as if it was a territory, but didn’t call it such.
Plus there is Washington DC which is neither a state nor a territory, but fully part of the US and a large number of military bases around the world that aren’t technically US territory but still in some ways are. In some case like Diego Garcia the US basically owns the entries island with nobody but US military allowed on them but it technically is owned by the British and claimed by Mauritius and everyone ignored the people who lived and were driven out there before the US moved in who want their island back. Or that part of Cuba that the US claims it leases but that Cuba refuses to accept rent for and that the US uses as a convenient place to incarcerate and torture people because the US constitution doesn’t seem to apply there.
It can get really complicated.
States have powers defined by the constitution (and their own state constitutions). They share sovereignty within their area of jurisdiction with the feds as members of the union (aka the US). As such, the citizens in each state can vote, through their state, for members of Congress (the House and Senate), and through the electoral college, for the president.
Territories are different on all these counts. Territories are lands the federal government has acquired, through various means, but which aren’t states. There will normally be a territorial governor and government, but those are set up by the feds, not independent under the constitution. Residents of territories are normally U.S. citizens, but there are no Congressional or Electoral College seats assigned for the territories.
These days there’s a slight exception in that territories like Guam hold votes at the same time as the election, but these are non-binding polls only; they don’t affect who actually becomes president.
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