Paul V McNutt
Banned
The thing about the Philippines population ITTL is that as part of the United States there would be unlimited migration to the mainland U.S. and Hawaii. So I think while the Philippines is still the largest state. What is also true is that Filipinos are the largest ethnic group in the U.S.
The population of the Philippines was about 16 million come WWII. by comparison, at the same time, New York, at the time the largest state, had about 13.5 million residents. the new york delegation to the house of representatives elected in 1940 (after the census whose figure I cited) had 43 representatives (out of 435), which works out to about one representative per 313,500 constituents. Using this same ratio, the Philippines would have 51 representatives, easily making it the largest state, which would control over ten percent of the house of representatives and 9% of the electoral vote. However, since 1911, the size of the house has been fixed at 435. So what share of the house does the philippines represent? well, it contains about 10.7% of the national population, which works out to 47 seats in the house (note that, in order to accomidate this, many states will lose several seats), and again holds 9% of the electoral vote.
I'm not going to discuss the long-term effects of adding the Philippines to the united states here, either in terms of domestic politics or the philippine standard of living. But note what this represents. the philippines is, in this scenario, instantly the most powerful state in the nation, bar none. many other states will lose out, either directly (weaker house delegations) or indirectly (reduced influence) in this deal. And a few other points. the philippines population has increased since world war two by a factor of 5.75, while the population of America as a whole has multiplied about 2.3 times in the same period. That sort of growth may slow, but it will at least match and probably outstrip the growth of the continental United states for a certain period (although this may be balanced out by emigration). Another factor is that this adds a large population of people who are ethnically, religiously, and linguistically distinct from the rest of America. Finally, all of this will have to be dealt with in advance, since the US had been promising independence for decades and the philippinos werent exactly eager for america to stay (having fought a war to that effect).
In short, all of these issues have to be dealt with at some point, and probably decades before WWII (whether this would impact Japanese strategic planning is an interesting question). personally, I dont know if it would be feasible to introduce the Philippines as less than two of three states (say, Leyte, Mindanao, and a collection of central islands (Samar, leyte, Negros, Panay, palawan)).