Illinoisan here, Pennsylvania and Idaho need to get their heads checked. I wouldn’t consider anything west of Kansas or east of Ohio(being generous there) as Midwest. Also just about anything south of the Missouri Compromise Line is a southern state, the Midwest is not the home of traitors.
Edit: correct mason Dixon to Missouri compromise
Wait until you see the Confederate flags in PA. Ya know, where the battle of Gettysburg happened. Very much not a southern state. It’s wild seeing this shit in my neighborhood.
Confederate flags are in canada and California, it’s just a flag for racists to roleplay with, the confederacy won’t rise again anywhere.
It won’t “rise again” but the spirit of it absolutely has resurfaced in other forms, and will continue too so long as a significant number of people in this country identify with white supremacy and abject hatred.
The original KKK were effectively the remnants of the Confederate army + new recruits. And it’s continued to find new banners in the generations since.
It very much depends on what you mean when you say “the spirit of it,” which I think you have to admit, is open to a lot of interpretation.
So much not a southern state that its bottom border is literally the Mason-Dixon line. Some people are, indeed, whack.
I have seen Confederate battle flags flying on trucks and houses in and around Gettysburg, no less. I get the impression that people are not doing this for historical reenactment purposes…
It’s the racism. That’s why.
Seriously. I live in the Cleveland area of Ohio. We are geographically closer to Canada than the Mason Dixon. There’s still an abundance of hoople heads flying confederate flags.
I saw more Confederate battle flags in Indianapolis than Atlanta. Fuck Indianapolis.
Even worse are the ones I see flying in West Virginia – you know, the state that only exists because its inhabitants didn’t want to secede along with the rest of Virginia.
South of the Mason-Dixon Line includes almost half of your own state of Illinois, and multiple other states that remained loyal to the union.
Did you perhaps mean to refer to the 36°30′ parallel that was used in the Missouri Compromise?
Personally I’m more worried about the 3% of Iowa who doesn’t consider itself the Midwest.
Yes the Illinois/Missouri/Iowa group could be nothing other than Midwest, I don’t know how those aren’t 100%. We’re the poster children of Midwest
Missouri is pretty Southern culturally, due to all the racism.
Oh I know, I live here, it’s still IN the Midwest though. STL and KC are at least decent cities, the rest of the state is horrible though
St. Louis is actually referred to (by its tourism board, at least) as “The Gateway to The West”. So, if it’s not mid west, I don’t know what they’re thinking.
my guess is that the 4.7% of missourians saying no are all in the ozarks/boot heel
Nah, they can’t read
There’s a big cultural divide for Illinois, Chicago isn’t very “Midwest” compared to downstate.
To say nothing of Idaho… What bunch of fucking morons. The state is one away from the left coast and they’re calling themselves “mid” west? Are they actually that stupid? (Yes, rhetorical.)
As someone from Idaho: yea this pretty much tracks
I mean, if we went with what the word should indicate, Idaho is absolutely the Midwest. As it stands, there’s no Mid or Mideast, the real “Midwest” is actually just the middle of the country. At this point, "Midwest* has almost nothing to do with relative location, it’s more of a social and economic distinction, which Idaho does fit in with imo.
IIRC, the term was founded when “The West” was pretty much everything west of St. Louis, but it’s been decades since primary school, so I could be (and often am) mistaken.
That map for the Mason-Dixon Line is not correct. The original line was at that latitude but it ended at modern day West Virginia. It was the line of demarcation between Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware and Maryland. It was used in congressional debate during and after the the Missouri Compromise to refer to the line of division between slave states and free states which lead to an unofficial expansion. Since the 1820s it has been understood to move directly north from it’s original endpoint until it hits the Ohio River then to follow the river west to the Mississippi River then to travel along the eastern, northern and western borders of Missouri. It ends on the 36°30’ parallel and extends straight west through the Louisiana Purchase. The 36°30’ line was applicable in the territories but not among the states. The Mason Dixon was the line of separation among the states.
https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/mason-dixon-line.htm
You are indeed correct, my bad it’s early where I’m at lol
Central Illinoisan here, and I’m pretty sure the half of Illinois south of the Mason-Dixon Line is the South, not the Midwest.
Well, Pittsburgh is culturally midwest even if they aren’t geographically so.
Pittsburgh is geographically midwest as well. The Appalachians were the historical eastern border of the Midwest.
I view Pittsburgh as honorary Midwestern territory. It’s a fantastic city, too.
We’re way too confrontational to be culturally midwest.
Haven’t been to much of the Midwest, then, I guess
I figured it was mostly passive aggressiveness rather than aggressiveness. Michigan has it too but I chalked that up to rust-belt overlap.
Could be; I’m in Chicago, so what I see is just active aggressiveness, haha.
Philly, on the other hand, is culturally… Philly.
Ey. Fuck you for saying so. And, fuck Pittsburgh. 🤌🏼
Pennsylvania does seem to be really far east for anyone to legit think that they’re in the Midwest, but I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting, yet, and don’t know much about the people there. I can offer some perspective on a couple states that aren’t exactly Midwest states:
Eastern Colorado is geographically and culturaly indistinguishable from Kansas, so I can see how people living in that area could consider it being the Midwest.
Since Oklahoma, my home state, was mostly just Native American territories it wasn’t really part of either side of the civil war and so I think a lot of today’s population don’t want to be associated with the south and its history. I personally would hate to be called a southerner, but I don’t think midwesterner is necessarily the right fit either.
Pennsylvanian here, sorry we have a lot of dumb people.
I once worked with a person from Ohio who thought Ohio was the furthest WEST Midwest state.
Map literacy is hard I guess
I don’t think Ohio is mid west… I know(think) it had something to do with the original 13 colonies but at this point the naming conventions need to change definitions.
Not really. Midwest is more west of Appalachia, north of slave states, and east of the Rockies. It’s the land between the mountain ranges
Ohio was not one of the original 13 colonies
Pretty sure they’re implying that the region west of the 13 colonies was called the Midwest, not that Ohio was considered the Midwest because it was one of the original colonies…
That leaves the majority of the country as the Midwest then and that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Really trying to make states fit into 3/4 designations doesn’t work, we need to split them into like 8 to make sense
So originally anything west of the Appalachian mountains was called the west. Then as they explored more of the land and gained territories the line that defined the west moved to the Mississippi, making the territories between the Appalchians and Mississippi the Midwest.
Now the regions are split based on census data, and there are huge swaths of land in the West and Midwest that are sparsely populated so they are larger regions in size.
It makes sense if you actually look into it and take a 5 minute google search to learn about it.
Sure, but designations from 200 years ago are irrelevant to a modern nation spanning a continent with colonies and military bases spanning the globe. To call everything west of the Appalachian mountains “the west” is nonsense now
Disappointed they didn’t survey the whole nation. It’d be funny to see figures like “0.1%” for Florida or Hawaii.
It would probably be 3%, as per the Lizardman Constant.
It would be one of the few time texas does not look crazy
I’m a little concerned about Pennsylvania.
That’s definitely the Pensytucky region chiming in
The Appalachians were historically the eastern boundary of the “midwest”. Considering that western PA is to the west of the Appalachians, those Pennsylvanians may, in fact, be correct.
I’m from Western PA, and while I wouldn’t say I see a lot of people calling themselves midwesterners, we’re more alike than we are different. Western PA is hard to classify in terms of region. Most of us just say we’re from Pittsburgh/Erie/whatever and leave it at that. But since it is hard to classify, 10% or so of us saying that we’re “Midwestern” does not surprise me.
Rust Belt works. Ohio is really part of three different places; the Rust Belt, Appalachia and the Midwest. Maybe The Rust Belt isn’t considered polite anymore, I don’t know, but my mother’s side of my family is entirely from the Pittsburgh to Cleveland area so I mean no offense. My grandfather was a career engineer at Bethlehem Steel, for example. His joke was that he literally sold bridges for a living.
80% of the state is to the west of the Appalachian chain. We haven’t been midwestern since Ohio gained statehood in 1803. However, nearly 10% of my state has tied itself to an identity as a Midwesterner because for 20 years conservatives have been calling it “the real america”. It’s like Pennsylvanias flying the Confederate flag. It’s about identity, not history or reality.
Some people consider Pittsburgh to be part of the Midwest for whatever reason. I guess it’s because it’s a rust belt city that’s closer to Cleveland than it is Philly.
There’s a decent amount of industry there, I think that is likely caused by the overlap between the Rust Belt and the Midwest.
They’re just about as dumb as the people in Tennessee thinking it’s the Midwest.
West Virginia can get partial credit, because they were probably just high.
Why is “west” in “midwest”? Can’t we just call these states mid?
Fixed
So living on the line would be living in the Midmid?
“Middle of nowhere” is the accepted term for that region
You have forgotten the face of your father.
We go by Midworld.
Hilarious
Oi get those linea out of Texas its Southwest
Because the US expanded from the east coast towards the west. The midwest is west of the OG colonies, but not as far west as, well, the west.
Yeah, living in Colorado has always been weird hearing that we’re “the west”. We’re about as middle of the country as you can get. 3 states to our west to get to the Pacific, 4 states to the east to get to the Atlantic.
Edit: lol at people downvoting geography
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Skill issue.
I believe it’s because these states are west of the Mississippi River and something something Louisiana Purchase (high school history was decades ago).
Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan are east of the Mississippi. We couldn’t reliably cross the Appalachian Mountains until shortly before the American Revolution. Expeditions before Daniel Boone forged the Wilderness Road had to go around so the most direct route between NY and where Chicago is now went about halfway down Alabama. The Appalachians were the original western frontier and the Midwest was the Northwest Territories. As the country expanded westward and new territories were established and the Northwest Territories gained statehood they became the Midwest.
Is your house surrounded on all sides by corn?
Does Napoleon Dynamite seem like a documentary about your town?
Then you live in the Midwest.
Napoleon dynamite takes peace in Idaho. It has a very rural theme to it, but it’s not Midwest.
Exactly. It’s not geographically midwest, but it embodies an idea of the midwest.
An endless patchwork of green and yellow squares. Countryside but not natural.
There are people in TN and AR that think they’re Midwestern?
“Y’all” talk too funny for that, now.
(I kid, I kid!)
I don’t agree with AR being Midwest, but I bet you that 10 percent of people in TN are those that live right next to Missouri
TIL that 25% of people living in Idaho are even dumber than I previously thought they were …
They are roughly in the middle of the west, as a whole country. I think our Midwest is fairly far east, due in part to the fact that the western edge of the USA was once much further east, and many conventions have survived from that time.
I am from Illinois, which fits most folks idea of what is midwest, but it’s really and truly just…middle
Three wests were given to the US, wisest and fairest. Seven to the dwarf lords…
Idaho is a… special place… if you know what I mean.
I never have figured out how to categorize Oklahoma, but Midwest has never been on my Oklahoma bingo card. It’s more like a less affluent extension of Texas that is full of bogus slot machines and smells like weed everywhere.
There is some surprisingly pretty land up there though. Growing up I always thought of it as a barren dust bowl wasteland. Lots and lots of trees in reality, at least in the eastern half. Don’t know what’s in the panhandle. I’m not sure anybody does.
Edit: Just as I finished typing this, a commercial came on the TV. To quote, and no I’m not kidding, “Live the flyover life. Move to Oklahoma.”
That part of the country is like part midwestern, part southern, part western.
Well, now you have to move to the panhandle after that commercial, let us know how it is.
I’m pretty sure it’s a giant meth lab
Texan here. Oklahoma definitely has more in common with Kansas than Texas. I’d call it Great Plains, which has a lot of overlap with the midwest but isn’t quite the same thing.
As a Kansan, don’t you dare put that evil on us!
I was born in Southern Arkansas and have lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma for 40 years. I consider myself a Southerner, not a Midwesterner. But that’s self-reported.
The joke here goes “You know why Texas doesn’t slide off into the Gulf of Mexico? Because Oklahoma sucks so hard.”
But truth be told, Tulsa is a pretty nice place to live. About half a million people and fairly progressive for a “Southern” state. And while many of the the hardcore conservatives moved to Texas, you still see a lot of Trump flags here.
I went to Tulsa once ten years ago and was very pleasantly surprised by it. Really a nice little city.
I always joke that there is East, West, and South Texas, and then there is Meth Texas, AKA Oklahoma.
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I’m from Wyoming and I’m calling bullshit on that number. Unless they talked to people living in the town of Midwest.
Not only is Wyoming solidly in the west, Wyoming arguably defines the west. Cowboys, sagebrush, the Rockies… If any part of Wyoming is “the midwest,” so is the moon.
Isn’t the tourism “mascot” for WY a cowboy? Kinda screams Western state to me.
The cowboy on the bucking bronco is also on their license plate.
The truth is that pretty much everything about the western US starts with California and then spreads back out. This is because, due to the gold rush, California was settled and made a state first, while the rest of the western states remained “territories” and only achieved statehood much later as they too became more heavily settled.
Basically, the settlement pattern of the western states is backwards after about 1852 or thereabouts, with the California and the west coast filling in first, and the interior states filling in later.
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pretty sure midwest is not the same thing as west lol
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According to google the town of Midwest, WY has 283 people, which is damn near half of the state’s population. So add in a few more confused cowboys and that checks out.
Totally agree. I’m in Colorado, nobody would ever call this the midwest. Maybe all the midwestern transplants here were confused about the question?
Who are the 8.4% of my fellow Hoosiers who don’t think they live in the midwest and where do they think they live?
hell
If I owned Hell and Indiana, I would rent out Indiana and live in Hell.
Chicagoland.
Where exactly is Chicago located? In terms of the country as a whole?
In Chicago.
If you were to slice the country vertically in half through texas it would be in the eastern half, it’s on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. Slicing it horizontally it looks like it would be cut in half, it’s almost in the middle. I just eyeballed this, btw I’m not a slice technician
The tip of the great droopy penis lake.
In the elementary school Indiana history class (4th grade) it was even a part of the curriculum* to learn where were are in the US.
We were taught that the Northwest Territory became what is now called the Midwest (the area east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio rivers).
- curriculum as of the late 80s / early 90s
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One thing I can say about Minnesotans is that we’re culturally odd.
We’ll take care of eachother, but don’t expect pleasant hellos and conversations with anyone. There are a lot of people that hunt, not a lot of people that hunt well or frequently. The Mall of America isn’t as awesome as when you were a kid. The death of Prince was a State Tragedy. To outsiders, no, Minnesota does not consist of Duluth, the Twin Cities, and snow filled cornfields. Yes it’s too damn cold. Yes it’s too damn warm for this time of the year. No we won’t quit complaining either way. Say yes to lefsa. Always safe with a caserol at a dinner party.
Never state something in a way that conveys your opinion or feelings too strong. That’s rude. Never stand too close to or facing straight towards people in a conversation. That’s rude. Don’t get too involved. That’s rude.
Do smile and raise a hand when you see someone you might know, or someone who does it to you regardless if you can identify them or not.
Skol!
Edit: So I asked my brother, and while he too was aware of hotdish being the correct entrée for a combination of ingredients baked in a pan, he also defaults to caserol. I think it’s because our parents and extended family do not live here. For those confused, tater tot hotdish != tater tot caserol
There are a lot of people that hunt, not a lot of people that hunt well or frequently
I’ve never been so offended by something absolutely correct. My shotgun that I haven’t used in a decade and the 0 deer I killed with it are upset now.
caserol
Minnesotan card revoked
Got me there. It actually caused a few fights in my former marriage, geen bean caserol is not in any way similar to green bean hotdish.
I’ve never been so offended by something absolutely correct
You ARE too good for a free banana though…
a caserol
Gotta call it a hot dish, or people will look at you weird.
Mall of America is even MORE awesome now that no one can stop me from buying out the entire Lego store!
but it no longer has a Microsoft store, which was the 2nd best place to nerd out after the Lego store
Wasn’t there also a board game store? I hope the pandemic didn’t kill that off.
Pandemic was actually pretty good for most board game stores, as people needed something to do at home.
Always safe with a caserol at a dinner party.
Imposter! A true Minnesotan would know you bring hotdish. Casserole is a Southern dish.
Edit: Also, WTF is up with “caserol” instead of casserole?
i can’t spell anything for too shits
I wave to every single person I see when out for my run regardless of whether I know them
So North-Central. Got it. (Am not American and don’t know American history very well)
When I was in highschool I thought Midwest referred to California and stuff because it’s the middle (North south wise) and in the west.
You’ve got the East and West regions defined by the coasts. Then you have the South, but it’s really just the southeast. The rest wants to be called the Midwest. There is no North, I guess…
That’s good old Canada.
Looks northeastern more than mid western
It called the midwest from a time a ago when the Mississippi river was the western edge. USA grew a bit and then more but the name stayed the same.
Most of y’all are east of the centerline.
You’re the middle east, not midwest.
I think you’re joking but the name comes from the migration of the incorporation of the states into the union. Not really geographically a reference
Edit: geographically, not geologically
As a Canadian, thank you for explaining. From the chart, I thought Americans in the middle states were just really bad with geography.
(also you mean geographically, not geologically)
As an American, I can confirm they are just bad with geography.
Shit, thank you!
Happy to learn that you’re unaware of all the new states.
We’re the middle child everyone forgets. Pardon my lack of empathy 😆
Eh, most of them kinda suck anyway…
Yeah, I’m especially ashamed of [your state here], but [my state here] really is a trailblazer.
Australian checking in with “I had never been told that”. I just figured it was geographical like our “mid north coast” but evidently not.
What does that mean?
The US started as 13 colonies/states on the East coast. In the terminology, everything past that is “The West”, and this general area is the middle-ish part of that, so “Midwest”.
It’s the name of the region. The Great Plains aren’t particularly great either, they’re just big. It’s like how the Mediterranean isn’t really in the middle of the world
Or how super foods don’t give you superpowers. :^)
“Great” in that sense doesn’t mean “good,” it means big. You see the same use in a lot of bird names as in the great blue heron or the great auk, just off the top of my head.
Are you telling me that great tits don’t have lovely mammaries?
Yeah I’m sorry I know they’re the particularly large plains. They’re just also several shit states and couldn’t resist the pun to mock them
funnily enough, this is probably one of those “if you know, you know” things.
And I don’t know what middle of what is implied here.
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If you’re west of the Mississippi river, you’re the West. Straight up.
Maybe on a purely east west dichotomy, but if we’re using the typical 4 regions of the u.s. : Northeast, south, Midwest and west, then that is not right.
Might want to check a map homie, cause I’m pretty sure Iowa is NOT in the captial-W West 😂
Maybe you meant the Missouri river?
Iowans calling themselves “midwest” while voting like southerners. You hate to see it.
Most of the Midwest votes like southerners, what are you on about?
Yeah, but Iowa used to be a swing state (meaning democrats used to have a chance there), now it’s as red as Texas.
When the Democrats decided they wanted to be the “Urban Elite Party” and paint the Republican party as the “Rural Uneducated Party”, they basically threw away Iowa. Iowa is as middle class plain-folk as you can get, so they will naturally align in opposition to the Urban Elite. That was a tactical error in how the Democratic Party formed its identity.
100 percent spot on. It’s also a huge part of how they lost such a ridiculous chunk of blue collar workers in spite of labor leadership being solidly Democrat for decades.
Poor whites and rural hicks became the only working-class people it was still socially acceptable to openly mock in public. This was noticed and exploited by the right with dire consequences for our current political landscape.
Of course, a ton of other variables were at play as well, but the certainty that so-called “coastal elites” held them and everything they valued in contempt played a huge role in convincing blue-collar and middle-class rural whites to vote against their economic interests.
Now here we are.
paint the Republican party as the “Rural Uneducated Party”
No paint necessary.
What the fuck are they smoking in Wyoming and Montana and Idaho?
That’s the “West” part.
But kinda mid tho.
Eastern Wyoming and Montana are the Great Plains, so that at least makes a little sense. Idaho though, there you have me. I am at a loss. Maybe it’s their poor public education system?
Bro there ain’t nothing else to do there
It’s funny that even if that’s not considered Midwest colloquially, physically it’s the most Midwest you can be in the US.
