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CANADA AS A 51ST STATE? REPUBLICANS WOULD NEVER WIN ANOTHER GENERAL
ELECTION
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Aaron Ettinger
January 6, 2025
The Conversation
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_ For a supposed anti-interventionist, it’s odd that Trump is
enthusiastically embracing ideas from the era of intense American
imperialism. _
Donald Trump smiles during a joint news conference with Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House early in Trump’s first
term in February 2017., AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Since his re-election, Donald Trump has drawn plenty of attention for
neo-annexationist
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propositions made on social media about the Panama Canal, Greenland
and Canada — including in the hours following Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau’s resignation announcement
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A day later, he threatened to use “economic force
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to make Canada the 51st American state.
For a supposed anti-interventionist
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it’s odd that Trump is enthusiastically embracing ideas from the era
of intense American imperialism
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Maybe that’s what Trump is going for. Perhaps he is trying to revive
the expansionist spirit
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Roosevelt
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William McKinley
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Polk [[link removed]].
Canadians who paid attention to their history lessons will sense some
neo-Polkism in these designs — a “54-40 or fight
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call for the 21st century.
Mild responses
Not surprisingly, Trump’s annexation propositions have been rebuked
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from the leaders of Panama, Greenland and Canada, some more forcefully
than others. Canada’s response has been mild at best.
Outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
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the man Trump now routinely mocks
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as the governor of America’s 51st state, counter-posted a video from
2010
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in which an avuncular Tom Brokaw explains Canada to Americans.
Trudeau and Canada’s cabinet ministers have also sought an audience
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with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to find
away around Trump’s ruinous tariff threats, a far greater threat to
Canada’s national interests than his annexation bluster.
[A dark-haired man and an older man with grey-ish blond hair smile at
a dinner table.]
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and president-elect Donald Trump at a
dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. (X/@JustinTrudeau)
Some Canadians may have favourable views
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of the United States but vanishingly few
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are interested in Canada becoming a 51st state.
Still, let’s play out Trump’s hypothetical. Let’s say that
Canada became the 51st state in the American union. What would be the
electoral implications for the U.S.?
Democrats would benefit
Trump and his Republican Party would certainly not like the answer:
the GOP might never win a national election ever again. Indeed, the
“state of Canada” would profoundly alter the electoral map of
American national politics, almost entirely in the Democratic
Party’s favour.
To see how, consider how the 51st state would be represented in the
institutions of American government.
Let’s begin in the House of Representatives because that’s where
integrating Canada would be the trickiest. In the U.S., House seats
are allocated on the basis of representation-by-population, which,
based on the 2020 U.S. census
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means one House seat for every 761,169 people.
With its population of 41 million, Canada would be apportioned about
54 seats, becoming a bigger state than California. Combine those 54
House seats with the two senators allocated to every state, and you
would have an electoral powerhouse north of the 49th parallel. None of
this would be good news for Republicans.
Of course, this assumes that annexation can overcome American
political fights
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over reapportionment and redistricting, and that Canada would accept
the American constitutional and legal formula
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for allocating seats that would whittle 338 House of Commons seats
down to 54 and its 105 senators down to two. But no matter.
Most Canadians would vote Democrat
Let’s look now at how Canadians would alter American elections.
Grafting Canada’s political culture onto U.S. party politics would
be awkward, so let’s make another assumption. Presume that
Conservative Party of Canada voters would vote Republican and
left-of-Conservative voters would vote for Democrats.
Generally, this would include supporters of the Liberals, New
Democrats, Greens and the Bloc Québécois.
Here’s where the 51st state becomes a big problem for Trump. Since
Canada’s right-wing parties united in 2003
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the Conservative Party of Canada has won an average of 35 per cent of
the popular vote. Canada’s left-of-Conservative parties, on the
other hand, have won an average of 63 per cent of the vote in that
time period.
In American terms, that means about two-thirds of voters in the state
of Canada would vote Democrat and one third would vote Republican, or
36-18 in the Democrats’ favour.
Looking back over the past quarter century, that margin would have
turned every Republican House majority
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into a Democratic majority (except for 2010). Indeed,
left-of-Conservative voters in the state of Canada would make it far
more difficult for Republicans to win a House majority ever again.
In the Senate, the two-thirds of Canada’s left-of-Conservative
voters would likely send a pair of Democrats to the Senate. That’s
not enough to alter the balance of power, but in a world of
single-digit margins of victory in the Senate, it’s not trivial.
After all, every senator counts, especially for things like Supreme
Court
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and cabinet confirmations.
Canadianizing the Electoral College
Now comes the big question: how would the state of Canada alter the
Electoral College?
Each state has Electoral College votes that are the sum
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representatives and senators. We also know (with some exceptions
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that the winner of the popular vote in each state takes all of that
state’s the Electoral College votes. Where would the state of
Canada’s 54 Electoral College votes go?
Given Canada’s left-of-Conservative leanings, the state of
Canada’s Electoral College votes would likely go to the Democrat
presidential candidate every time. That would have swung two
Republican presidential victories in the Democrats’ favour this
century [[link removed]]
(2000 and 2004) and would have made Trump’s victories in 2016 and
2024 even smaller — so small, in fact, that American electoral math
in the expanded U.S. would be fundamentally changed.
So perhaps it’s time for Trump to recognize that Canada is a
different country with its own history and political culture. Better
yet, Trump could recognize that his churlish taunts trivialize a
needless trade war that risks hundreds of billions of dollars and
thousands of jobs
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on both sides of the border.
Trump could recognize that the countries he is antagonizing are part
of a strategic network of allies that sustains American power in the
world. If that’s not enough for Trump to act seriously, he could at
least follow his electoral instincts.[The Conversation]
Aaron Ettinger
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Associate Professor, International Relations, _Carleton University
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This article is republished from The Conversation
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the original article
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* Donald Trump
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* Canada
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* elections
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* neo-annexationist
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