President-elect Donald Trump doubled down on his push for the United States to annex Canada this week and make it the 51st state.
‘I called him Governor Trudeau because they should be the 51st state really. It would make a great state,’ Trump said before a room full of Republican governors on Thursday of the outgoing Canadian prime minister.
Trump, 78, has been trolling Trudeau and Canadians for weeks with talk of U.S. expansion to the north.
Trudeau has said point-blank it ‘will not ever happen’ and warned it is a distraction from the president-elect’s tariff threat which would cause prices to soar.
Democrats have also blasted Trump’s expansionist talk as an effort to divert focus from his controversial Cabinet nominations and agenda.
But when it comes to representation, expanding the U.S. to 51 states with inclusion of Canada is also not politically advantageous for Trump or Republicans going forward.
And it comes as the GOP has pushed for years to block other potential admittance into the union because of what it would mean for their numbers in Congress.
Canada is a country of roughly forty million people broken down into ten provinces and three territories.
If it were to become one massive state as Trump has been calling for, it would become the most populous state alongside California.
It would also be the largest state in terms of land mass as Canada is larger then the entire U.S. including all 50 states combined.
What would Canada becoming a state mean for Congress?
If Canada were hypothetically to become a single massive U.S. state, it would mean a dramatic shift in the make-up of Congress and not one that benefits Republicans.
Canada as the 51st state would be entitled to two senators. While the country has people with political leanings across the spectrum, as a whole it’s a socialized more liberal-leaning one.
Even if its senators were not actual members in the Democratic party, they would be more than likely to caucus with Democrats.
With such a tightly divided Senate (Republicans regained a 53 to 47 seat majority in January after Democrats held the majority since 2019), adding two Canada senators would make it harder for Republicans to retain control with 53 seats to Democrats’ 49 seats.
It’s even more complicated in the House.
Currently, there are 435 voting House member divided among the fifty states representing roughly 750,000 constituents each.
The total population each member represents would shift dramatically with the inclusion of Canada as would the number of representatives from each state should the U.S. stick with 435 total voting House members.
That maximum number was set with the Permanent Apportionment Act in 1929.
If it were to remain at 435, Canada would receive a number of seats somewhere between California which currently has 52 and Texas which has 38 thanks to 2020 census data. With the shift, dozens of states would also lose seats.
Exactly how many of seats would be blue versus red with the change is challenging to determine due to redistrict. But like with the Senate, Canada would presumably send more left-leaning members to Congress, threatening House Republicans’ already fragile majority.
In another scenario, Congress could hypothetically also pass a new law completely changing congressional apportionment and raise the number of representatives, but that would not change Canada’s overall makeup as a blue state.
Trump’s talk of adding Canada as the 51st state comes as Republicans have long vehemently opposed adding Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia as states even as people in both are already U.S. citizens.
Advocates for the U.S. territory and nation’s Capitol gaining statehood have argued both pay taxes have populations greater than multiple states already. But Republicans have pushed back on the move because it would benefit Democrats in Congress.
‘I think this is one of those things that is a hair-brained idea that was just thrown out,’ said Casey Burgat, from George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, of the Canadian statehood talk.
He said Trump’s comments have forced some in the GOP to try and defend it despite it being ‘probably not even wanted by either side.’
What would it mean for the Electoral College?
The the battle for the White House has in recent elections all come down to just seven swing states as the U.S. elects presidents using the Electoral College with electoral votes based on the results in each state.
Add Canada to the mix and Democrats head into every election with an even greater advantage on the path to the White House.
A poll of Canadians in October before the U.S. presidential election found the vast majority of them would have voted for Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump in November.
64 percent of Canadians said they would vote for the vice president if they could vote in the election, according to the Leger survey. Just 21 percent said they would vote for Trump, making it a safe assumption Canada would be in the blue column.
Add another massive blue state with a large congressional delegation to the U.S. and it would dramatically complicate the GOP path to victory.
That’s because the distribution of electoral votes per state is allocated based on the census. The number of votes are equal to a state’s congressional delegations.
For example, Pennsylvania in the 2024 election had 19 electoral votes with its 17 congressional districts and two senators.
Currently, California has the most electoral votes at 54 while the second most populous state Texas has the second most electoral votes with 40.
Currently there are 538 electoral votes, so a presidential nominee needs to reach a majority of 270 to win.
Trump won the 2024 election with 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226 with a sweep of all battleground states.
If Canada received 45 House seats and two senators, that would mean 47 electoral votes locked for Democrats while other states lose representation and therefore electoral votes.
Would Canada ever even choose to become a state?
While the mechanics of how Canada becoming a state would impact representation is one reality the U.S. would have to grapple with, whether Canadians would even consider joining the U.S. is another altogether.
Trump has suggested Canadians want to join the U.S., but Canadians have rejected the idea.
A Leger survey conducted December 6 to 9 found 82 percent of Canadians said they would not like their country to become a U.S. state while just 13 percent said they would.
That includes majorities across all of Canada’s main political parties.
Trudeau bashed Trump’s claim that Canadians want to join the U.S. on Thursday.
‘Canadians define themselves a whole bunch of different ways, but one of the ways that we all use as shorthand is “we’re Canadian because we’re not American,”‘ Trudeau said in remarks during a visit to Washington, DC.
‘That is not going to change,’ he added.
His comments come as Trudeau prepares to leave office and his Liberal Party seeks a new prime minister.
His party, which is more aligned with Democrats, has been in power for nearly a decade, but it’s facing a leadership crisis while the more GOP-aligned Conservative Party appears more likely to win a majority in an election this year.
However, the Liberal Party’s current unpopularity does not necessarily mean Canadians have ideologically become more conservative or right wing or pro-Republican Party, explained professor Wendell Adjetey from McGill University.
He said they simply want a new leader and party to address Canada’s economic challenges.
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