Good rule of thumb: if your state fought for the Confederacy you are not part of the Midwest.
Looking at you Tennessee and Arkansas.
Missouri feels like a southern state, but St Louis feels like a midwestern town
I-70 roughly divides the state north and south. So north of it, it tends to feel more Midwest. Very much like Iowa. But south of it, it definitely starts feeling more Southern.
But both KC and STL are solidly Midwestern. It actually makes more sense to look at them from another dimension: east-west. St. Louis is the western-most “Eastern” city, while Kansas city is the eastern-most “Western” city.
Kinda? Chicago just doesn’t feel very “Midwestern” to me, but I did grow up in Sioux Falls, which is definitely the Midwest.
Chicago is on the eastern edge of what I’d consider the Midwest, but it’s not really any further east than Milwaukee, which is definitely Midwestern. I’m not sure if the dissonance is just due to Chicago being a World City, if that cosmopolitan vibe is interfering with a Midwestern baseline or vice-versa.
You’ve gotta include Minnesota. They’re some of the most Midwestern people I’ve ever met. I think we might get a lot of it from Canada
Michigan is soundly Midwestern lol you definitely cannot call Ohio and Michigan part of the East Coast, and both of those are East of Chicago. Chicago is in the heart of the Midwest.
Not East Coast but certainly Rust Belt or Great Lakes region. Nothing in Eastern Time is in the Midwest. It’s the East. That’s why they called it “Eastern Time”.
Why would the name of the time zone matter? Also the upper peninsula of Michigan extends west of Chicago, can half the state be Midwestern?
As a non-American I always assumed “midwest” meant between the northwest and southwest. So like, California and the state to the east of it (Nevada?). Are the highlighted states not more “north middle”?
You have to keep in mind that the US started on the east coast and then expanded west. A lot of the terminology we use goes back to those days, where everything west of the original colonies was “The West”.
I’m from Wisconsin, family from Michigan as well and traveled there a lot. Went to college in Iowa and dated girls in college who all were from Illinois. Now i live in Minnesota.
One thing i find odd is that Minnesotans don’t do a lot of the Midwest stuff. No midwest goodbyes, no chatting up strangers as if they were your BFF, doing all the obligation events we never want to do but say “o yah we should get together”, etc. The whole Minnesota Nice, aka being passive aggressive, isn’t really that Midwest. Of all the Midwest I’ve lived in, the highest ranking one is definitely the least Midwest in my eyes.
If I read it right, those were pole results from people in those states. Have to go read it again/
