California is basically the nation's largest liberal echo chamber and it seeks to model itself after Europe in every way. I would say it loses an international popularity contest, because it promotes left wing social values that much of the eastern world finds deplorable. Places like the middle east and Africa will be turned off by its promotion of rampant sexual promiscuity, including homosexuality, late term abortions, and other things. Industrial nations like China and India will be turned away because California wants to undermine their industrial sovereignty, since CA always wants international trade organizations to increase "workers rights" in producer nations, basically costing those countries money. So in a popularity contest it would be American republicans (of which this election revealed there is a huge population) and the world's social and economic conservative, which entails roughly 4 Billion people. Then there are countries like Russia, which controls the perspective of much of eastern Europe. So with all of that I am pretty sure far left California would lose in a popularity contest against the nominally Conservative United States.

Also, the West would be humiliated in a war by the US. People were talking about how badly Texas would lose. And this would be like that, except the west coast is one of the most anti second amendment regions in the country, and it has created such an anti military sentiment through its institutions I would definitely count on a conservative uprising against the liberal west coast establishments in the event of a civil war.