What states do you consider to be part of the Midwest?

Welcome to ILX, is this your first time here?

xpost

casseroles are some dope shit imo

Kentucky is the South, by the way.

like how on earth could you exclude the dakotas from the "midwest"?? SoDak, in particular, is, like Iowa, a prototypically midwestern state to me.

seems like the european guy is most otm:

and the great plains and great lakes regions as somehow 2 constituent parts of the midwest (and western rustbelt as maybe a 3rd subpart of it). But somehow I think of the western parts of the dakotas and kansas and I guess Nebraska as sorta different again but can't articulate why. Western Pennsylvania I can't decide about

― äüßerst delikate angelegenheit, Thursday, October 22, 2009 1:52 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

MY MIDWEST:
Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan

I've never been to a Dakota, gbx. I think of them as having mountains, but then I guess they're pretty big so probably the eastern side is hardly in the same state as the western side.

i grew up on the east coast so the western plains states feel like foreign countries to me still.

casseroles: terrible, awful, gay, midwestern, food
ND & SD: midwest

afaik the dakotas are totally mountain free (except for the black hills?)

but i always forget that the dakotas are not as far west as i think they are.

I've never been to a Dakota, gbx. I think of them as having mountains

hoo boy xpost

i've only been to michigan once, and all the cool parts are at least as far as colorado!

nodak: no mountains
sodak: black hills along the western edge, otherwise just farmin' that looks exactly like southern minnesota and parts of iowa

holy shit some of u are retardo

― how rad bandit (gbx), Thursday, October 22, 2009 3:39 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OTM

Yeah the western half of S Dakota (which I'd describe as hilly rather than mountainous, though you do get up to, what, near 7000ft elevation?) seems too frontiersy to be part of the Midwest. A place like Deadwood is the antithesis of Midwesternness, even back then.

Interestingly, I think I agree most with the two other people on this thread who are native Illinoisans:

ohio
indiana
michigan
wisconsin
illinois
minnesota
iowa
missouri

― access flap (omar little), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(I'm not sure I'd include Missouri myself, but it's the first state I add if I expanded my list.)

the only midwest states are the states with big ten schools. shit, except for pennsylvania.

― t0dd swiss, Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(Had this exact same thought.)

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/04/electoral-history-charts.html

MIDWEST =

"rust belt"
IN, MI, OH, PA

"north central"
IL, IA, MN, WI

"prairie"
KS, NE, ND, SD

yeah PA doesn't really fit in the midwest, but it's def rust belt and the rest of the rust belt is midwest so

(xpost: That is, the two other native Illinoisans before Granny Dainger posted.)

Missouri is 100% midwest, no contest

the rust belt isn't all in the midwest. western NY is in the rust belt, too.

ok srsly laurel no offense but thinking that the dakotas have mountains is totally blowing my mind! i mean, i've driven all the way across sodak maybe a dozen times (at least), and it is, in my brain, basically shorthand for "the flat expanse of the middle western states"

but i guess some of you just think "plains states"??

many xposts

jaymc otm + would also accept the dakotas east of the missouri r. + missouri north of the missouri r.

south dakota is just like nebraska but about four hundred degrees colder in the winter

also, btw, you know that trope about the midwestern/alaskan "connection"? like, that got thrown around a bit during the elections w/r/t palin's accent and support, etc.?

they were not talking about illinois, indiana, ohio, or pennsylvania.

MIDWEST =

"rust belt"
IN, MI, OH, PA

"north central"
IL, IA, MN, WI

"prairie"
KS, NE, ND, SD

this sounds about right, with the "rust belt" provisos posted above.

mookie otm!

yes cosign

btw for those of you that are defining the midwest as vast expanses of agri flatland, you should prob tweak that definition a little bit, given northern mn, western SD, and pretty much most of WI.

No it's okay! I mean obv I'm totally clueless about the Dakotas. And I really can't recall why I thought they had mountains. I'm trying to think of a book or a toy or a map or something but no good.

mount rushmore?

insidious north dakota tourism propaganda

My Midwest
ND SD NE KS MN IA MO WI IL MI IN OH

I love how emotional people are getting about this!

I've driven across Nebraska on the way to Colorado, but no further north than that.

btw for those of you that are defining the midwest as vast expanses of agri flatland, you should prob tweak that definition a little bit, given northern mn, western SD, and pretty much most of WI.

― Don Quishote (jjjusten), Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:53 AM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, see, i tend to think of Midwestern as more of a cultural thing, which is why western sodak and s missouri and parts of the rust belt and like all of KY doesn't ring right to me

what is oklahoma, btw? just north texas?

ND SD NE KS MN IA MO WI IL MI IN OH

― Mr. Que, Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:54 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is otm

OK=Texas's trucker hat

wisconsin is such an attractive state

it's an area of the map, not whether a place has the characteristic of midwesternness. imo.

some parts of the rust belt, like pittsburgh and buffalo, are not in it. and some parts that are not flat are in it.

yes, you are correct, not a single part of penn or fucking NY is in the midwest, who on earth would even suggest that

also i can categorically say that there are no mountains in the midwest

our state boundaries were drawn by slavers and plutocrats and paid for in blood anyway, fwiw

^^ i mean, just the midwest's

u_u

waht is the mesabi range a range of

holes, now

tru

I really do think being a Chicagoan has a great deal to do with my conception of the Midwest. In some ways, the states that I consider "Midwestern" are ones that don't feel that far away, and that I've been to more than a couple of times. So Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and (obviously) Illinois all fit -- and as I said earlier, I'd be willing to accept Missouri, too (especially since St. Louis is only 4.5 hours away, and I've visited there no fewer than four times).

Whereas the Dakotas and Nebraska and Kansas just feel instinctively wrong to me -- but maybe that's because I've never been to North Dakota or Kansas, and have only been to South Dakota and Nebraska on a big family road-trip vacation to Yellowstone and back when I was nine years old.

Oh wait, my band played a show in Omaha once. But still, that's like 7 or 8 hours away.