Why doesn’t an if constexpr make this core constant expression error disappear?

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The standard doesn’t say much about the discarded statement of an if constexpr. There are essentially two statements in [stmt.if] about these:

  1. In an enclosing template discarded statements are not instantiated.
  2. Names referenced from a discarded statement are not required ODR to be defined.

Neither of these applies to your use: the compilers are correct to complain about the constexpr if initialisation. Note that you’ll need to make the condition dependent on a template parameter when you want to take advantage of the instantiation to fail: if the value isn’t dependent on a template parameter the failure happens when the template is defined. For example, this code still fails:

template <typename T>
void f() {
    constexpr int x = -1;
    if constexpr (x >= 0){
        constexpr int y = 1<<x;
    }
}

However, if you make x dependent on the type T it is OK, even when f is instantiated with int:

template <typename T>
void f() {
    constexpr T x = -1;
    if constexpr (x >= 0){
        constexpr int y = 1<<x;
    }
}
int main() {
    f<int>();
}

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