OT: Which States make up the 'Midwest"
joker44
In the wind
From 538.com
"Indiana, Iowa and Illinois appear to be the core of the Midwest, each pulling more than 70 percent of the vote (that may partly be because of their substantial populations). Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota each pulled at least 60 percent of the vote, so we can probably put them in the Midwest without too much fuss. Ohio, Missouri and Kansas each got more than half.
As for the rest of the states, it seems unclear whether they're in the true Midwest.
If anything, the Midwest is as nebulous as I'd expected. Too often, people refer to vast swaths of American territory as a solid region. It's easy to break Americans into tribes such as “Midwestern,†but there are more subdivisions and diversity in these groupings than we generally acknowledge."
See entire article here with graphic map:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-…
"Indiana, Iowa and Illinois appear to be the core of the Midwest, each pulling more than 70 percent of the vote (that may partly be because of their substantial populations). Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota each pulled at least 60 percent of the vote, so we can probably put them in the Midwest without too much fuss. Ohio, Missouri and Kansas each got more than half.
As for the rest of the states, it seems unclear whether they're in the true Midwest.
If anything, the Midwest is as nebulous as I'd expected. Too often, people refer to vast swaths of American territory as a solid region. It's easy to break Americans into tribes such as “Midwestern,†but there are more subdivisions and diversity in these groupings than we generally acknowledge."
See entire article here with graphic map:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-…
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13 comments
Ask what region most Wisconsinites, Minnesotans, Illini and Indianans believe they're in and most will say the Midwest. I'll throw in Missouri, as it seems fair to consider Kansas City and St. Louis to be Midwestern. With Minnesota and Missouri in the Midwest, I'll begrudgingly include Iowa as well.
Throw in Michigan and Ohio, too.
West of that pack, Great Plains & Mountains. East, you're in the east. South, you're in the South.
After that it gets dicey: Are North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas in the Midwest or the Great Plains? It depends on how many regions you want to divide the U.S. into. If there is a Great Plains region, then these states are in it; otherwise they're Midwestern.
The other unclear case is Missouri, which has aspects of the Midwest and the South (and, for that matter, the Great Plains). It was a border state in the Civil War, with its population evenly divided between Union and Confederate sympathizers, and its status is uncertain to this day. Personally I would put Missouri in the Midwest, but many people in the southern part of the state identify more with the South.
While we're at it, I would suggest that Texas is simultaneously a Southern, Western, and Great Plains state and that those three regions come together around Dallas-Fort Worth. If this sort of thing interests you, read _The Nine Nations of North America_ (1981) by Joel Garreau, a somewhat dated but still fascinating study of the regions that the U.S. and Canada, both overly vast, could more naturally be divided into.
BTW, for what it's worth, was in Tampa for the first time in 15 years week before last. Made a point of stopping by Mons Venus, and was rocked by a 21yo spinner writhing stark naked in my lap. OMG!!
I think my point was unclear. I meant that the term "Midwest" originated in the early 1800's before we had admitted all the western states to the union. "Midwest" does not seem appropriate for Ohio or Michigan today, but it did at one time.