chapotraphouse

In my future fiction project, Canada was parted into six states and three territories. The differences from the current ten provinces were

• British Columbia renamed to just Columbia (having "British" in the name is unpatriotic)
• Saskatchewan split exactly 50-50 between Alberta and Manitoba
• State of Atlantica formed out of the Atlantic provinces (Newfoundland & Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island)

At the same time, the following changes were made to the Lower 48:

• North Texas, South Texas, East Texas, West Texas split from Texas (see Texas divisionism)
• State of Lincoln formed from Eastern Washington and the Idaho panhandle
• State of Jefferson formed from Northern California and Southern Oregon
• Eastern Oregon ceded to Idaho (see Greater Idaho)

As a whole, 12 new states were formed in connection with the annexation of Canada, 6 north and 6 south of the old border. Thus the Lower 48 came to be known as the Lower 54. This strategy of matching the newly annexed states with carving new states from preexisting ones was favored since it couldn't easily be predicted how many conservative Canadians actually would vote GOP, thus splitting off regions already known to consistently vote Republican would, worst case scenario, keep the balance between Republicans and Democrats, and best case scenario give Republicans the electoral upper hand.