Disappointed they didn’t survey the whole nation. It’d be funny to see figures like “0.1%” for Florida or Hawaii.
It would probably be 3%, as per the Lizardman Constant.
It would be one of the few time texas does not look crazy
I’m a little concerned about Pennsylvania.
That’s definitely the Pensytucky region chiming in
The Appalachians were historically the eastern boundary of the “midwest”. Considering that western PA is to the west of the Appalachians, those Pennsylvanians may, in fact, be correct.
I’m from Western PA, and while I wouldn’t say I see a lot of people calling themselves midwesterners, we’re more alike than we are different. Western PA is hard to classify in terms of region. Most of us just say we’re from Pittsburgh/Erie/whatever and leave it at that. But since it is hard to classify, 10% or so of us saying that we’re “Midwestern” does not surprise me.
Rust Belt works. Ohio is really part of three different places; the Rust Belt, Appalachia and the Midwest. Maybe The Rust Belt isn’t considered polite anymore, I don’t know, but my mother’s side of my family is entirely from the Pittsburgh to Cleveland area so I mean no offense. My grandfather was a career engineer at Bethlehem Steel, for example. His joke was that he literally sold bridges for a living.
80% of the state is to the west of the Appalachian chain. We haven’t been midwestern since Ohio gained statehood in 1803. However, nearly 10% of my state has tied itself to an identity as a Midwesterner because for 20 years conservatives have been calling it “the real america”. It’s like Pennsylvanias flying the Confederate flag. It’s about identity, not history or reality.
There’s a decent amount of industry there, I think that is likely caused by the overlap between the Rust Belt and the Midwest.
They’re just about as dumb as the people in Tennessee thinking it’s the Midwest.
West Virginia can get partial credit, because they were probably just high.
Some people consider Pittsburgh to be part of the Midwest for whatever reason. I guess it’s because it’s a rust belt city that’s closer to Cleveland than it is Philly.
Is your house surrounded on all sides by corn?
Does Napoleon Dynamite seem like a documentary about your town?
Then you live in the Midwest.
Napoleon dynamite takes peace in Idaho. It has a very rural theme to it, but it’s not Midwest.
Exactly. It’s not geographically midwest, but it embodies an idea of the midwest.
An endless patchwork of green and yellow squares. Countryside but not natural.
TIL that 25% of people living in Idaho are even dumber than I previously thought they were …
They are roughly in the middle of the west, as a whole country. I think our Midwest is fairly far east, due in part to the fact that the western edge of the USA was once much further east, and many conventions have survived from that time.
I am from Illinois, which fits most folks idea of what is midwest, but it’s really and truly just…middle
Three wests were given to the US, wisest and fairest. Seven to the dwarf lords…
Idaho is a… special place… if you know what I mean.
Who are the 8.4% of my fellow Hoosiers who don’t think they live in the midwest and where do they think they live?
hell
If I owned Hell and Indiana, I would rent out Indiana and live in Hell.
Chicagoland.
Where exactly is Chicago located? In terms of the country as a whole?
In Chicago.
If you were to slice the country vertically in half through texas it would be in the eastern half, it’s on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. Slicing it horizontally it looks like it would be cut in half, it’s almost in the middle. I just eyeballed this, btw I’m not a slice technician
The tip of the great droopy penis lake.
In the elementary school Indiana history class (4th grade) it was even a part of the curriculum* to learn where were are in the US.
We were taught that the Northwest Territory became what is now called the Midwest (the area east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio rivers).
- curriculum as of the late 80s / early 90s
Still blows my mind that Midwest apparently means “slightly not easy coast.”
Like in my mind it would be Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah. That kind of area. Considering it’s midway through the west half of the country.
Well, it used to be called the Northwest Territory.
Then we expanded even further west and it became the “old west”.
Then the “old west” came to mean the Southwest region pre-statehood.
So then they became the “Midwest”.
This makes me wanna play some red dead
It’s probably named by the people who named middle East, like it’s the west of the eastern Nations but they named it coz it was in the middle of their way to the east
So it should just be mid?
Definitely is.
In my mind, the midwest is west of the Mississippi and through the plains. Colorado starts the traditional west with Texas being the exception.
Read a US history book on the westward expansion and it will all make perfect sense. Hint; it might have something to do with older names remaining in use up until the current day.
So North-Central. Got it. (Am not American and don’t know American history very well)
When I was in highschool I thought Midwest referred to California and stuff because it’s the middle (North south wise) and in the west.
You’ve got the East and West regions defined by the coasts. Then you have the South, but it’s really just the southeast. The rest wants to be called the Midwest. There is no North, I guess…
That’s good old Canada.
Looks northeastern more than mid western
It called the midwest from a time a ago when the Mississippi river was the western edge. USA grew a bit and then more but the name stayed the same.
Iowans calling themselves “midwest” while voting like southerners. You hate to see it.
Most of the Midwest votes like southerners, what are you on about?
Yeah, but Iowa used to be a swing state (meaning democrats used to have a chance there), now it’s as red as Texas.
When the Democrats decided they wanted to be the “Urban Elite Party” and paint the Republican party as the “Rural Uneducated Party”, they basically threw away Iowa. Iowa is as middle class plain-folk as you can get, so they will naturally align in opposition to the Urban Elite. That was a tactical error in how the Democratic Party formed its identity.
100 percent spot on. It’s also a huge part of how they lost such a ridiculous chunk of blue collar workers in spite of labor leadership being solidly Democrat for decades.
Poor whites and rural hicks became the only working-class people it was still socially acceptable to openly mock in public. This was noticed and exploited by the right with dire consequences for our current political landscape.
Of course, a ton of other variables were at play as well, but the certainty that so-called “coastal elites” held them and everything they valued in contempt played a huge role in convincing blue-collar and middle-class rural whites to vote against their economic interests.
Now here we are.
paint the Republican party as the “Rural Uneducated Party”
No paint necessary.
What the fuck are they smoking in Wyoming and Montana and Idaho?
That’s the “West” part.
But kinda mid tho.
Eastern Wyoming and Montana are the Great Plains, so that at least makes a little sense. Idaho though, there you have me. I am at a loss. Maybe it’s their poor public education system?
Bro there ain’t nothing else to do there
It’s funny that even if that’s not considered Midwest colloquially, physically it’s the most Midwest you can be in the US.
10% of Tennessee is so high on hillbilly heroin they don’t know which question they got asked and just said “yes” on the off chance it was “would you like some free oxy?”
13% of
TennesseeWest Virginia is so high on hillbilly heroin they don’t know which question they got asked and just said “yes” on the off chance it was “would you like some free oxy?”I bet you that 10 percent are the people who are in the very northwest corner of TN so it would make some sense for them to answer yes given that they’re not far from Missouri.
“where is the middle-of-the-west?”
(American points north-by-north east)
It’s because the US started on the east coast and expanded westward, it was named back when it actually was the middle of the west and just never changed it. Same way we still refer to the art movement that began in the late 1800s as “modern art”.
I’m just being a smartass. Although, Americans do have trouble renaming things.
This message sent from a Robert E. Lee phone
Good thing you brought it up, though. I was really confused about where midwest turned out to be.
Very surprised 42 percent of Coloradans and 25 percent of Idahoans would say they live in the Midwest.
Well, 78% of Americans think that Idaho is Iowa, so this doesn’t shock me.
but I thought Iowa was in Idaho? which is it?
How could Iowa exist within a potato?
Maybe one of Idaho’s clones is in Iowa. He’s got a lot of 'em.
They aren’t clones. They’re gholas. Like, dude, get your terminology straight
Well they’re right…they live basically in the middle of the west.
Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana are Rocky Mountain West, not the MidWest. Good grief.
All three have a significant portion of their state in the Great Plains.
I was born in Nebraska and lived there until my early 20s when I moved to Wyoming and I’ve been here for 30 years. I’m very familiar with both areas. The “Great Plains” stops somewhere in the western panhandle of Nebraska. The pine forests up around Chadron (NW corner) have nearly nothing in common with the Cottonwood infested prairie down around Lincoln (SE corner). If you want to stick along I-80, which makes the discussion easier, there’s a solid argument that the “Great Plains” ends somewhere West of North Platte and East of Sidney.
Let’s start with water, the average annual precipitation in Lincoln is right at 30" but as you go West it keeps decreasing and by the time you reach Sydney it’s down to 15", a reduction of 50!
The drastic reduction in precipitation is mirrored by a change in the soil as somewhere around there the soil changes from the rich dark farmland of the East to the tan sand hills of the West. Following the water and soil change the plant life itself becomes notably different; its not only less dense it also has far less of the native prairie grasses in it. The change in plant life also makes the animal life different; for example there are no Antelope on the Eastern side but as you go West they start appearing. Deer and Elk are also different with White Tails disappearing as you move West but Mule Deer and Elk starting to appear. Nebraska has not Native Moose population that I’m aware of but by they can be found even in South Eastern Wyoming.
I’ve stomped around Colorado and Montana a fair bit too over the last 30 years and it’s no different there. The Border Area of Colorado and Kansas is vastly different than the area around Lawrence, Kansas or Manhattan on the East Side. It’s the same with the Eastern Border of Montana up against the Dakota’s; there’s notable and large differences between that area and everything East of North Platte, Nebraska.
The Great Plains as embodied by Iowa, Eastern Nebraska, and Eastern Kansas are separate and distinct from the High Plains of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana.
I mean, southwest Colorado was part of the Dust Bowl. Culturally it’s definitely part of the Great Plains area. I would argue that eastern Wyoming and Montana are as well. They have more in common with the Dakotas than they do with the Rockies.
I still wouldn’t consider it the Midwest, but at least there’s a tenuous thread of logic to the idea.
Southwest Colorado would be Durango / Montrose which is on west side of the Rockies! You think that’s part of the Great Plains area?
Even SE Colorado such as Pueblo and Lamar are very distinct from towns and cities east of North Platte, Nebraska.
Culturally Eastern Nebraska is heavily Germanic / Western European Immigrant. Hell up into the 2000s there were still lots of little churches with at least one weekly service conducted in German. You won’t find that in Pueblo.
I’m struggling to understand all of these cultural similarities that some of you see. Yes they’re all Americans but everything from the type of soil they live on to their ancestry and immigration patterns is WILDLY different between Lincoln and Pueblo.
There are people in TN and AR that think they’re Midwestern?
“Y’all” talk too funny for that, now.
(I kid, I kid!)
I don’t agree with AR being Midwest, but I bet you that 10 percent of people in TN are those that live right next to Missouri
I lived in the States for five years and I still don’t really get what Americans mean when they say the midwest. I guess that’s partly because Americans also don’t know, so you never get the same explanation twice.
It’s all the middle junk nobody wants which is why there’s so much of it.
Seriously tho, the historic context is that “The West” was west of the Mississippi river, which iirc got started calling that after the Louisiana Purchase. So the previous “west” wasn’t accurate enough so the states between the Mississippi and the Appalachian mountains (chiefly the northern states around the Great lakes). Then the area has just kind of expanded to include the plains states since they’re also flyover country
So basically anything that not the extreme east or west or south becomes midweast?
Pretty much, there’s some pretty clear distinction as well. Like you won’t find anyone on any part of a coast calling themself a midwesterner obv, but also the south east has the distinct trait of being The South, for better or worse. Usually worse. Southwest also gets a similar effect from being what everyone thinks of as “cowboy country”.
