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

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netherworld purgatory

see also Virginia and lol.

how's life, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 17:45 (ten years ago) link

No love for the A's either. In no way shape or form is Pennsylvania part of the Midwest.

DavidLeeRoth, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 18:15 (ten years ago) link

cubs/brewers/tigers/twins = def midwest

i guess when i think of Midwest what i'm really thinking of is Upper Midwest: eastern bits of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, maybe Iowa and northern Illinois (really just Chicagoland)

Missouri/Indiana/greater Illinois....that's like a whole other, distinct region to me

and Ohio has always seemed too far east to me to count and yet it seems the most quintessentially midwestern? i never know what to do with Ohio

gbx, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 23:25 (ten years ago) link

i do agree with that 538 thing inasmuch as Iowa is The Midwestern State (more so than Illinois imo)

gbx, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 23:28 (ten years ago) link

how could anyone be in any doubt that wisconsin is part of the midwest? have they BEEN here?

espring (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 April 2014 23:48 (ten years ago) link

also who in hell thinks west virginia is the midwest? it was part of virginia, one of the original colonies, for chrissakes.

espring (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 April 2014 23:49 (ten years ago) link

Southern Illinois is more of a border south area, as is true of southern Indiana. Calling Kentucky a Midwestern state is, as amply pointed out already, insane. Iowa is the very heart of the Midwest.

Aimless, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 23:49 (ten years ago) link

does that map say no one is a fan of the mets

― j., Tuesday, April 29, 2014 12:35 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think there were any districts in which the mets had a larger fanbase than the yankees, no. not even in the neighborhoods surrounding the mets ballpark.

espring (amateurist), Tuesday, 29 April 2014 23:49 (ten years ago) link

yeah states should be evaluated by how similar they are to Iowa

A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, 29 April 2014 23:52 (ten years ago) link

doncha know

Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 29 April 2014 23:55 (ten years ago) link

i guess when i think of Midwest what i'm really thinking of is Upper Midwest: eastern bits of the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, maybe Iowa and northern Illinois (really just Chicagoland)

This is pretty much how I see it but only because I grew up in Michigan and basically everyone I know is there, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Chicago area. Iowa, southern Illinois, the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska - that's all like great plains or farmland and is of no concern to me. Ohio is a black hole that I know nothing about but a lot of people I know hate it. Missouri is definitely the south.

So basically if you aren't touching Lakes Superior, Michigan, or Huron GTFO.

joygoat, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 00:03 (ten years ago) link

see "great plains or farmland" pretty much equates to Midwest for me. If you're far from a coast, there's no mountains for hundreds of miles, it gets hot n humid in summer and pretty damn cold in winter, you're in Midwest.

A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Wednesday, 30 April 2014 00:22 (ten years ago) link

Ohio is the heart of it all.

Mayor Manuel (La Lechera), Wednesday, 30 April 2014 00:49 (ten years ago) link

you've got a friend in non-midwestern pennsylvania

mookieproof, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 01:00 (ten years ago) link

Granny Dainger otm. As someone who grew up in Chicago and took yearly car trips to Omaha, I consider both -- and everything in between -- to be equally midwest.

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, 30 April 2014 02:13 (ten years ago) link

People have really strong feelings about this.

Jeff, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 02:24 (ten years ago) link

The US Census Bureau has an official answer to this, right?

(It seems more or less in line with what I thought, although I wasn't sure about KS and MO.)

EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, 30 April 2014 02:39 (ten years ago) link

five years pass...

https://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2019/08/midwest_metros_map_hero/940.png

We surveyed more than 12,000 people (and counting) about the most contentious border question in the U.S. to reveal the true geography of America’s midsection.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/08/where-is-the-midwest-map-geography-great-lakes-rust-belt/597082

mookieproof, Friday, 30 August 2019 19:09 (four years ago) link

truth

j., Friday, 30 August 2019 20:59 (four years ago) link

there would be more green parts in nebraska but they don't have computers in that part of nebraska

j., Friday, 30 August 2019 21:00 (four years ago) link

wanna know what these people in amarillo and memphis and providence are thinking

mookieproof, Friday, 30 August 2019 21:02 (four years ago) link

I grew up in Southern Illinois. I'm a Midwest purest = OH, IN, MI, IN, IL, WI, MN, IA, MO.

Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Friday, 30 August 2019 22:10 (four years ago) link

If cincinatti is in the midwest, all of kentucky must be in.

ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 30 August 2019 22:56 (four years ago) link

nope, too far south

j., Friday, 30 August 2019 22:57 (four years ago) link

outside the ❤️

j., Friday, 30 August 2019 22:58 (four years ago) link

back to the core, the heart states. echo and the bunnymen

mookieproof, Friday, 30 August 2019 23:13 (four years ago) link

I feel like once you’re north of the twin cities a ways, Minnesota becomes something else. If you can see a moose, you’re not really in the midwest anymore maybe

untuned mass damper (mh), Friday, 30 August 2019 23:16 (four years ago) link

eastern Nebraska definitely midwest, once you get past the Omaha/Lincoln corridor it turns into a plains state eventually

untuned mass damper (mh), Friday, 30 August 2019 23:17 (four years ago) link

^ watch carefully as this deceptively mild-mannered hawkeye attempts to lock down a spurious authority to exclude his bemidjian compatriots from the promised land

j., Friday, 30 August 2019 23:32 (four years ago) link

i'm not saying it's not part of the midwest, at all, but my understanding of the upper peninsula is that it might actually be part of another world

mookieproof, Friday, 30 August 2019 23:34 (four years ago) link

I would throw Oklahoma into the midwest and maybe North Texas. They both have more in common with that than the south or southwest.

Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Friday, 30 August 2019 23:40 (four years ago) link

no big 10, no credibility

mookieproof, Friday, 30 August 2019 23:54 (four years ago) link

People, plains states are not the Midwest, they are a whole other thing.

Also, just because some cross border inbredness occurs in areas like Southern Illinois-Southern Indiana-Western Kentucky (or Southern OH/Northern KY) doesn't mean Western Kentucky is the Midwest, anymore than the fact that Eastern Kentucky is Appalachia transforms Indiana into Appalachia by virtue of their shared border.

Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Saturday, 31 August 2019 00:56 (four years ago) link

I feel like a 250 mile radius surrounding the sears tower is the midwest.

ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Saturday, 31 August 2019 01:05 (four years ago) link

Or maybe it is an ellipse with foci at the longitude of chicago and east chicago

ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Saturday, 31 August 2019 01:07 (four years ago) link

*longitudes

ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Saturday, 31 August 2019 01:07 (four years ago) link

thank you for not suggesting a radius around touchdown jesus

mookieproof, Saturday, 31 August 2019 01:12 (four years ago) link

I grew up in the upper peninsula and it is definitely the Midwest but also indeed another world; northern Wisconsin and Minnesota are kind of in this realm too but the UP feels much more like Alaska or Canada in a lot of ways due to the isolation from the bulk of the states population. That map seems right to me with “Great Lakes” and “rust belt” and “great plains” being three distinct sub-regions.

The thing about eastern vs western Dakotas feels true to me also - I drove from MI to WA a lot and somewhere in the western third of the state it became “the west”.

Also looking at that made me realize I always think of KS, NE, IL, and IA as the Midwest but never Missouri for some arbitrary reason. I’ve never been to Missouri though.

joygoat, Saturday, 31 August 2019 01:15 (four years ago) link

Like Western NY has more in common with Northern OH than NYC, but now we are going to say that NY is in the Midwest? No.

Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Saturday, 31 August 2019 01:27 (four years ago) link

joygoat, this whole general thang has a lot to do with it i think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise

j., Saturday, 31 August 2019 02:46 (four years ago) link

grew up in western NY state which I thought of even as a kid as part of the midwest

Dan S, Saturday, 31 August 2019 02:50 (four years ago) link

i don't want to discount your lived experience out of hand, but also you are a literal madman

great lakes, yes. rust belt, yes. some shit about the erie canal, yes. midwest tho? c'mon

mookieproof, Saturday, 31 August 2019 03:05 (four years ago) link

how many pronunciations of 'bagel' and 'Mario' can one midwest hold?

ilxors are still exuberant (Sufjan Grafton), Saturday, 31 August 2019 03:15 (four years ago) link

one

j., Saturday, 31 August 2019 03:16 (four years ago) link

Also looking at that made me realize I always think of KS, NE, IL, and IA as the Midwest but never Missouri for some arbitrary reason. I’ve never been to Missouri though.

in many ways, literal and psychedelic, but also anti-psychedelic, missouri is the combination of all those states

i am also larry mullen jr (Karl Malone), Saturday, 31 August 2019 03:39 (four years ago) link

thank you for not suggesting a radius around touchdown jesus

― mookieproof

and thank you for mentioning touchdown jesus.

i am also larry mullen jr (Karl Malone), Saturday, 31 August 2019 03:40 (four years ago) link

For some reason I think of Missouri more as “the south” than any of the places that surround it on three sides. Or at least more south than north and nothing that is the south can be the Midwest.

joygoat, Saturday, 31 August 2019 04:03 (four years ago) link

Missouri is Midwestern, but not 100% Midwest.

You can't ever have owned slaves or started a catfish farm in the Midwest. They just had a machine-gun shooting governor resign over a weird S&M episode – that ain't the Midwest I know!

pplains, Saturday, 31 August 2019 04:10 (four years ago) link

But they do call Coke "Pop," so that kinda tips it back to Midwest.

pplains, Saturday, 31 August 2019 04:11 (four years ago) link


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