Percent of People Who Consider Themselves Living in the Midwest

Lizardman constant. You'd probably have about 3% answering yes in California or Maine as well.

Actually the lowest value on the map for the discrepancy to the definition.

Oklahoma is also not Midwest. They aren't friendly enough.

Great Plains and Midwest are almost synonymous.

Well America used to be just a handful of colonies along the eastern seaboard, but then there was the whole manifest destiny thing. Going west meant heading out to the new frontier. Midwesterners are people who gave up midway.

As a born and bred Seattleite, I consider Wisconsin east coast. I also consider Montana east coast. Idaho? Not Midwest. East coast. Spokane? East. Hawaii? So far west it's east. Everything is east.

Idaho is sometimes considered Pacific Northwest (in particular North Idaho) but generally Idaho is Inland Northwest

I'm a product of the Idaho education system, and it's not great. Luckily got a start in Washington, so it didn't ruin me completely. But that result does not surprise me at all.

It's at an unholy cultural crossroads. Can't decide if it's Midwestern, Southern, Southwestern, or Texan.

The weeeeed capital of America babbbbbyyyy

Imagine doing so in Idaho! Like that’s almost all the way west

okay but i live on like the very edge, so… pseudo-midwest?

I mean if you live on the border with Ohio, you are basically in the Midwest culturally.

They're probably somewhere near the midwest of the state...

I don't.

It really feels like there's been some sort of movement in Ohio to disown being in the Midwest. I'm in north east Ohio and I know I'm in the Midwest.

Yeah I can’t believe it. We are “mountain west” (as opposed to pacific west).

My bet with Wyoming is that most of the (admittedly small) population is in the Eastern part of the state, like Cheyenne and Laramie, if kinda makes sense they'd see themselves as more "Midwest"

From the driver's seat of a semi, Colorado feels like bits and pieces of its neighboring states smooshed together. You got Utahrado, New Mexirado, Wyomirado, and, yes, Nebraskarado, which is probably where the Midwestern Coloradans live. The only part where I really feel like I'm in a distinct state is the high mountain forests that shoot down the middle of the state.

Denver is probably where it is because it's right at the intersection of quite a few of these biomes. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's been a major trading center for about as long as humans have roamed the continent.

It’s probably the same confused souls in Kentucky

It makes more sense when you consider that for most of US history the country was significantly smaller than it is now. Originally the country pretty much just consisted of the East Coast - and France, England, and Spain still had large chunks of territory within the US's current borders.

Much of what's now considered the west wasn't captured from Spain/Mexico until much later. So basically just look at it from the perspective of the East Coast where the US originated. To them at that time what we consider the Midwest now would have just been the west. And the terms changed with the westward expansion.

Manifest destiny / westward expansion

As someone who moved here from New England let me explain.

• Cheese curds
• Dontcha know?
• Discount Canada

That's the midwest.

Because Midwest is a nice way of saying "flyover country"

Coastal part is The South. Inland, you get Southwest. Then there's the panhandle, and while I don't know much about what the locals think of it, from the driver's seat of a semi it's indistinguishable from the flatter parts of Oklahoma. (Meanwhile, one of my favorite truck stops is in the hilly part of Oklahoma: the Chocktaw travel center in Stringtown.)

SW = texmex so def SW

The Ohio River was once the border of the frontier. Some ways that border is still there.