Governor of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rossello said in an address after Sunday's vote, "The people spoke and the US will have to obey the will of our people".
More than half a million people voted for statehood during Sunday's referendum, followed by almost 7,800 votes for free association/independence and more than 6,800 votes for the current territorial status.
The Associated Press reports that only partial results are in but a low turnout and boycott by several opposition parties calls into question the validity of the non-binding vote.
Congress has the final say over whether the territory changes its status, making the vote merely an advisory opinion. At this point in time, the results of the vote have not provided any conclusions for Puerto Rico.
The 38-year-old governor accused opposition parties of undercutting the validity of the vote, having come to power in January on the promise that he would make the island territory the 51st U.S. state. The governor announced that the US territory overwhelmingly chose statehood on Sunday in a non-binding referendum held amid a deep economic crisis that has sparked an exodus of islanders to the USA mainland.
Puerto Ricans have been United States citizens since 1917.
The opposition Popular Democratic Party had said "statehood will win by a landslide" because of the boycott by opposition parties. In 2012, the island opted for statehood, but Congress, the ultimate arbiter of the Puerto Rico's bid for statehood, never picked up the matter.
The party's elections commissioner, Miguel Rios Torres, told the Guardian that the turnout had been so low as to make a mockery of the organiser's claim that it represented the will of the Puerto Rican people.
"It's impossible for Puerto Rico to pay that debt, except if every last dollar that the Puerto Rican worker has in his pocket is taken out of his pocket, " said Lopez Rivera in an interview published last week on the Democracy Now website. "This vote will do nothing to help our island, and the US Congress has promised nothing in terms of responding to it".
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The next step is for the U.S. Congress to decide-and Suarez isn't holding his breath, citing the ongoing gridlock on domestic issues.
As New York's annual Puerto Rican Day Parade moved along Fifth Avenue, voters on the home island cast ballots overwhelmingly endorsing statehood.
"Supporters of statehood did not seem enthusiastic about this plebiscite as they were five years ago", he said.
A department spokesman told the AP that the agency has not reviewed or approved the ballot's language.
The current territorial status option received 6,821 votes, or 1.32 percent.
The first three referenda were inconclusive, with voters split on statehood versus the status quo. This is in stark contrast to the last plebiscite held in 2012 - in which 1,363,854 people, or 78.19 percent of registered voters, cast a ballot.
Some argued the results should have been considered a "no" since more than one-third of voters left the part about alternative status blank.
Some statehood supporters on Sunday expressed dismay that certain voting centers appeared empty.
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