Illinoisan here, Pennsylvania and Idaho need to get their heads checked. I wouldn’t consider anything west of Kansas or east of Ohio(being generous there) as Midwest. Also just about anything south of the Missouri Compromise Line is a southern state, the Midwest is not the home of traitors.
I never have figured out how to categorize Oklahoma, but Midwest has never been on my Oklahoma bingo card. It's more like a less affluent extension of Texas that is full of bogus slot machines and smells like weed everywhere.
There is some surprisingly pretty land up there though. Growing up I always thought of it as a barren dust bowl wasteland. Lots and lots of trees in reality, at least in the eastern half. Don't know what's in the panhandle. I'm not sure anybody does.
Edit: Just as I finished typing this, a commercial came on the TV. To quote, and no I'm not kidding, "Live the flyover life. Move to Oklahoma."
Minnesotan here. Minnesota is in the midwest if that's the question you're asking. Minnesota is chock full of proud northerners who have nothing to do with the midwest if you're asking that question instead.
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?"
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.
As someone born and raised in the Midwest (Ohio and Illinois) and is currently a resident on the West Coast (Oregon), the way I define it is as such: if there is corn, it's the Midwest. If there are cowboys on horses, it's the west or southwest. Does your state touch the Atlantic or Pacific? That's what coast you are on (Hawaii and Alaska excepted).
I know a dude from Michigan who insists Minnesota is not the Midwest. I won’t show him this map because offering facts and statistics doesn’t change his mind about anything.
Denverites and fort collins are lying to themselves if they think they have more in common with the rest of the mountain west than they have in common with Kansas City.
I believe this is closer to reality. I forgot an east coast subgroup.
edit: It's called the mid atlantic and people are big mad about its exclusion on a shitty, crude map in context to a discussion about the Midwest. lmao
Many in Utah think they’re Midwest too. It’s wild. (In my case their answers to me indicated they didn’t know where the Midwest is, not that they identified with it)
Interesting to me that Ohio and Michigan two states that I thought were firmly Midwestern identify less as Midwestern than what I always thought of as the Great Plains states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas.