Errr… by what logic is Idaho translocated to the plains? CO, MT and WY I can kinda see, since their eastern reaches do extend to the high plains region - although they are more often considered to be Rocky Mtn. states. But Idaho? It lies entirely to the west of the continental divide. It’s usually lumped in with Oregon and Washington as part of the Pacific Northwest, or sometimes with Utah & Nevada as the Intermountain region.
I live in IL and didn’t vote for WI or MI but I don’t have an argument against them being Midwestern. I just tend to mentally lump them in with “Great Lakes Region” states. I suppose they’re both.
OK, but that’s an argument for why they would all be in, not why some people would consider Nebraska part of the Midwest, but not the Dakotas.
P.S. I don’t know how things are in northern Kansas, but in the southern part of the state, most of the state is ranching, not farming, country. Take Dexter, which is in the eastern third of the state: you’re in ranching territory there.
I read a high school geography book that called Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota “Great Lakes States”. This may have been a cultural/industrial category, however.
I’m a little surprised to see Ohio and Michigan included. Those are Rust Belt to me. I included OK and AR, but they kind of float in Texas’s sphere of influence. Texas, of course, is not Southern or Midwestern, but distinctly Texan, which is its own category.
Missouri (however I think only part of it qualifies - the bootheel is certainly not the midwest)
Nebraska
South Dakota
Kansas
Oklahoma
Iowa (all of it, but I can’t explain why considering the Missouri thing)
The rest of the states are either too far north, west or east for me to consider them midwest states.
I’m originally from Kansas, and the vast majority of Kansans would consider themselves midwesterners. I don’t think I’ve EVER heard someone refer to themselves as a “Great Plainser” (ian?). The geography in eastern Kansas (where 80%+ of the population lives) is the same as the geography in Indiana (where I live now).
Find it interesting that outside of Oklahoma, the survey results are strongly favoring the Census defintion of the Midwest.
As for those people saying “Wisconsin is a Great Lakes state” or “Ohio is a Rust Belt state”: many people haven’t heard of the Rust Belt and most can’t define its boundaries, both terms are far less used than Midwest in everyday speech, and most people use “Midwest” in contrast to South/Northeast/West.
After 100 votes, the total number of states is 949, so the average person includes 9.5 states in “the Midwest”.
Setting the cutoff between OK at 24% support, and South and North Dakota, at 49% each, there are twelve states with broad support as being in the Midwest, 2.5 more than the average number people include.
From MI, which of course is midwest. I consider Ohio and states west of OH which touch the Great Lakes (which of course leaves out NY and PA), plus IA. I could go either way on the KS-NE pair. Sometimes I count them, sometimes not. Ditto with the Dakotas.
I’m a New Yorker, but I’ve always thought of the “Midwest” to be the plains (not necessarily “Great Plains”, just those with the lager part being non-mountainous) states that are not a) amongst the original 13 colonies (that’s “East” to me), b) part of the Confederacy (that’s “South” to me, and the overlap of a and b are “Southeast”) and c) east of the Rockies. So to me, the region includes the Great Plains, which seems to me as a geographic and cultural continuation of the states immediately to the east (i.e., the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas as continued from Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri). And Oklahoma always “felt” to me to be more of a continuation of Kansas than of Arkansas. Perhaps it’s more similar to the Texas panhandle than to Kansas, but if we’re not splitting states, I have to say Texas as a whole has a distinct character.
This. If you drive west on I-70, Kansas City (both of 'em) feel Midwestern, as does Lawrence*, as does Topeka. By the time you get to Manhattan (the Little Apple), things start to feel more Great Plains-y. You could say the Flint Hills are the eastern edge of the Great Plains, more or less, in terms of population density, farm size, and overall landscape traits.
The main driver for this seems to be annual rainfall. If you draw a line along the east edge of the Gulf of Mexico (that is, along the west coast of Mexico), as it curves along southern Texas, keep it going in a straight line north, straight up to Lake Winnipeg. In general, east of this line there’s enough rainfall to make things feel “Midwestern”; west of it, it’s dry enough to feel “Great Plains-y”. And it’s no coincidence – moist air from the Gulf of Mexico is the main reason for the higher rainfall east of this line.
*not including all the maple trees, planted by Massachussetts abolitionists!
