More people live in DC than all of these western counties combined

During the DC statehood debate in the House this past summer, Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks argued that Washington DC is too small to be a state.

“Giving DC statehood is the equivalent of giving Jefferson County, Alabama, or the Tennessee Valley separate statehood status,” Brooks said in a June 24 press release. “That is nuts.”

Brooks was not alone. Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, argued in June that sparsely populated, “working-class” states deserve statehood more — but alas, the District doesn’t even have a logging industry.

But though DC is geographically small, it is densely populated, with more residents than both Vermont and Wyoming. In contrast, many western states have large, lightly populated areas. Take Loving County, Texas, an area almost 10 times larger than DC but with only 82 residents as of the 2010 Census.

So what would a contiguous state, made up of sparsely populated counties and smaller in population than DC, look like? If limited to the continental US it might look like this.

The collection of sparsely populated counties would take up most of Nevada and spread across part of 10 other states. It would take up more than 366,000 square miles, becoming the second-largest state in the US. Given recent DC population estimates, an even larger area could likely be mapped out after the 2020 Census.

Of course for truly large areas, with few people, one has to look to Alaska. Few people have a grasp on just how enormous Alaska is compared to other states, but laying it on top of the continental US gives some sense of its size. And yet despite all that land mass, DC’s population is nearly equivalent to Alaska’s. DC has more people than Alaska if two of six Assembly districts in Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage are removed — or all of Alaska except for the part in blue on the map below. And over the last 10 years, DC’s population has grown faster than Alaska’s, putting the District just one Assembly district behind Alaska.

DC is geographically small — about 6% the size of Rhode Island — and entirely urban and suburban, with little room for mining, logging or farming. But neither size nor the types of industries present have ever been required for statehood. Population, on the other hand, has. The Northwest Ordinance required a territory to have 60,000 people. Later the number rose to 90,000 (though three states — Colorado, Wyoming and Oregon — were allowed exceptions).

More than 700,000 people live in DC now, more than both Wyoming and Vermont. DC has more people in it now than any state had at its date of admission except Oklahoma. The only way to see DC as “too small” is if you think representation should be based on land mass, not people.

Correction: Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, but not its capital, as was incorrectly stated in the original version of this article.