If Blue America and Red America go their own separate ways...

[brucejoel99]

Would there be Pacific or Atlantic halves, or would there also be at least a third section in the Midwest? More generally, a lot of this depends upon exact boundaries and circumstances.

(It's also sort of more interesting to consider an independent "archipelago of cities", which would be significantly richer than the hinterland it broke off from but also be militarily at its mercy, than the clean 1861-style state-by-state split. Why should Little Egypt be part of Blue America while Austin is in Red?)

There's obviously at least an independent Chicago city-state- but, after a while, the impracticality sets in, the city's economy collapses, the Republican vs. Democrat dichotomy loses relevance, and it joins Red America. Of course it's not a clean state-by-state split, but the major break I felt deserved mentioning was the huge Pacific and Atlantic halves separated by over 2,000 miles. Blue America couldn't survive as a single archipelagic state, but its contiguous coastal anchors could.

Blue America is going to have to have either virtually open borders and close economic integration with either Red America or Canada. If the motivation for this is some kind of decision to peacefully coexist, then I can see it coming down to "archipelago of cities", in which case you'd (by necessity) see close relations with Red America and no collapse of cities' economies or anything, even if the two countries are rivalrous in some regards and have very different politics.

If it's a state-by-state split, then it becomes easier to envision actual hostile relations between Blue America and Red America, where the border between them might become harder, since they wouldn't have to be dependent on each other, and some kind of tacit agreement where Blue America gets eastern Washington, and places like that, while Red America keeps Austin and cities like it. But this is a scenario where relations between Blue America and Canada would beyond-certainly be incredibly close, and relations between Red America and Blue America would be so poisonous, so that there would be a third "Midwestern" Blue archipelago. IL would have contiguity-by-water so long as MI is part of Blue America.

(Underrated question here is: what happens to Canada in this scenario? Might Alberta and Saskatchewan -- whose Premiers often cosign letters with Republican Governors, and are the only majority-Conservative provinces -- form some sort of "Red Canada"? Would Quebec become independent? In that case you could envision three separate Blue nations, Atlantic, Midwestern, and Pacific, linked only by water on the Great Lakes or in the literal Arctic. But on the other hand, the whole concept of nations splitting because of geography substantially relies on just how slow communication used to be; today, dialects of different languages are homogenizing, not diverging. I think geographically discontinuous nations are much more plausible than 100 years ago; I doubt anything like the Statute of Westminster would've happened if the Internet already existed in 1931.)

Ultimately this scenario is too underspecified to really say for sure.

It would be interesting if Canada, Greater California (CA, Clark, Maricopa, Coconino, and Pima counties, Oregon, Washington, NM, the Apache and Navajo Nations, and Colorado),  Greater New York and New England (NJ, New England, New York), the Great Lake Cities (anchored around Hennepin, Cook, Cuyahoga, and Wayne counties), and the Delmarva could form some confederation, so they can be contiguous. Maybe they would have the native areas of Alaska and Hawaii would be interested in coming in, too.

Of course, an entirely alternative & perhaps more reasonably efficient route would just be Blue America joining Canada.

Blue America (even if just the coasts) would still have a much larger population than Canada, so Canada would never agree to it since it would still be de-facto annexation.

That might be a trade they're willing to make for the resultant explosion in GDP thanks to absorbing much of the American economy, especially since joining Canada would mean retaining the Canadian governmental structure & good laws thereof.

In that case Alberta and Saskatchewan would join Red America for sure, since their Conservative Party would be in permanent minority.

Nah. Organized Canadian conservatives are still closer to Democrats so long as the CPC considers issues like health-care, abortion, & LGBT rights to be settled law & don't seek to do away with them at every opportunity. A GOP government won't wanna incorporate such left-ish states. I mean, there exist post-UCP merger polls which have showed Alberta's NDP leading in the rurals, let alone in Calgary & Edmonton. The thing that you should understand about a majority of Albertans is that they're loyal to conservative principles, not parties. They don't care about the CPC, UCP, Wildrose, or even the NDP, or whoever it really is, for that matter, if they don't mess with their stable pocketbooks; ditto Saskatchewan & the SK Party.

Not to mention, not only would the First Nations peoples who have sovereignty over large portions of lands in those provinces likely not wanna separate under such circumstances, but their treaties are with Ottawa; they still matter, & they can't just be renegotiated with a (presumably) right-wing provincial, if not Republican-American nationalistic government.

[LabourJersey]

I don't know how this would go, but it would not be a clean state-by-state split by any stretch of the imagination.

The division is not and has not been red state versus blue state. The division is cities and dense metropolitan areas versus exurbs and rural areas. The cities in red states are the beating hearts of their economies, and would not consent to leaving the Union.

If another civil war ever broke out it would be guerilla type forces in the rural and exurban areas that revolt. They would not have the resources and connections to ever form an actual nation state, but could probably wreak some real havoc on the Union