Since his re-election, Donald Trump has drawn plenty of attention for neo-annexationist propositions made on social media about the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada — including in the hours following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement. A day later, he threatened to use “economic force” to make Canada the 51st American state.
For a supposed anti-interventionist, it’s odd that Trump is enthusiastically embracing ideas from the era of intense American imperialism.
Maybe that’s what Trump is going for. Perhaps he is trying to revive the expansionist spirit of Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley and James Polk.
Canadians who paid attention to their history lessons will sense some neo-Polkism in these designs — a “54-40 or fight” call for the 21st century.
Mild responses
Not surprisingly, Trump’s annexation propositions have been rebuked from the leaders of Panama, Greenland and Canada, some more forcefully than others. Canada’s response has been mild at best.
Trudeau, the man Trump now routinely mocks as the governor of America’s 51st state, counter-posted a video from 2010 in which an avuncular Tom Brokaw explains Canada to Americans.
Trudeau and Canada’s cabinet ministers have also sought an audience 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.
Some Canadians may have favorable views of the United States but vanishingly few 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 favor.
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, 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 over reapportionment and redistricting, and that Canada would accept the American constitutional and legal formula 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, 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’ favor.
Looking back over the past quarter century, that margin would have turned every Republican House majority 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 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 of their House representatives and senators. We also know (with some exceptions) 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’ favor this century (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 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.
Aaron Ettinger is Associate Professor, International Relations, Carleton University, Ottawa.
The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.
- External Link
- https://theconversation.com/canada-as-a-51st-state-republicans-would-never-win-another-general-election-246616
19 Comments
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TaiwanIsNotChina
No one every accused the MAGAs of thinking too much.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Not just the US and no genocides in those states yet.
Data
Exactly. It's the kind of MAGA limited, second-grade thinking that defines the movement...
MAGA self-owning, over and over...
GBR48
Since when did slaves in annexed and occupied territory get a vote?
Zaphod
That is a very statist claim. Canada obviously had enough of Trudeaus woke extremism, so why should there not be similar shift back to normality like you saw in the US? Actually, the trend is pretty universal. Similar populist, anti-elite parties are gaining everywhere in Europe, while the EU is furiously pedalling against it. But the tide is shifting.
bass4funk
Oh, I vehemently disagree with that one.
Which made him a billionaire and finally the President....again
And winning...
Jay
Ha, dream on Ettinger. If that ever happened, REAL hardworking Canadians from the Oil'N'gas provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan, as well as inner BC - would ABSOLUTELY vote Republican. These are people who value hard work, self-reliance, and the industries that Leftist, Globalist elites love to vilify.
Sure, woke Canadians in Toronto/Vangroover might have their heads stuck in Uber "Progressive" sand, but REAL people in the heartland are far more aligned with conservative, common-sense values than you're willing to believe. Add them to the voting base, and Republicans would gain a massive loyal bloc of voters who actually understand the importance of resource development, free markets, long-absent national pride and fighting back against the woke mind virus.
FizzBit
Who writes this stuff? Oh, “The Conversation” bwa ha ha ha.
wallace
The Inuits of Greenland do not want to be part of the US. They want total independence from Denmark but organizing a referendum in that vast country is very difficult and replacing all the aid they receive from Denmark is another.
Deo Gratias
The key words there are "since 2003."
That's 22 years ago.
It doesn't matter what the "average" is for the past quarter-century.
It matters how people are voting now.
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (not exactly a conservative mouthpiece), the Conservatives now are "holding a 23-point national lead and being still on pace for a massive majority government" in this year's elections.
That's right -- a massive Conservative majority government.
In Canada.
THIS year.
So, Canada becoming America's 51st state is not necessarily the electoral bonanza for Democrats that one might think.
Canada is not as "lib" as it used to be, and there's every reason to believe that in the coming days and years, it may very well become even more conservative.
In other words, this article is expressing only one essential sentiment:
Wishful thinking.
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/
Deo Gratias
Why do you say that?
Canada is going conservative. It's headed for a "massive majority Conservative government" in the days ahead.
It's not me saying that. It's the CBC saying it.
Read it and weep:
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/
Try to keep up with the news. Trudeau just resigned in disgrace. The Conservatives are whooping the Liberal's tails in every poll.
The political tide has shifted to the right (and I mean "right" in more ways than one) in the U.S. -- and it is in Canada too.
So, Canadian statehood in the U.S. is definitely not the political bonanza that Democrats -- and it seems, the writer of this article -- are assuming and hoping it to be.
Could very well be the opposite. Again, read the news and try to keep up with what's going on in Canada.
Trump knows what he's doing -- again, your snickering comment notwithstanding.
wallace
Canadian Conservatives are not Republicans who would want to see a republican country with a president and loss of political control.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Canada's conservatives are pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. We can live with such conservatives.
bass4funk
You spoke to all of them???
The leaders of that territory
They would be royally compensated annually
bass4funk
The ideologies are very, very similar in the same way liberals are very similar to the ones in the US, they complement each other very well.
You can make the same argument about having a Democrat President.
wallace
The Inuits of Greenland do not want to be part of the US.
Watched interviews of the Inuit and Inuit leaders.
Peter Neil
here. look over here at this shiny, wiggly thing.
don’t look at the serious stuff that needs to be done. keep making all these pixels about nonsense while you’re getting thrown under the bus by politicians.
nishikat
Ok then let the USA have Canada's national healthcare system. The US's is garbage. Glad we agree.
Me too. I would vote for Trump forever if the US had Canada's healthcare system.