Is the Midwest one region or two?

[King of Kensington]

Is the Midwest one region or essentially two: the Great Lakes/Rust Belt and the Farm Belt/Heartland?

[Sol]

I think if you're using big categories like "the South" or "the Midwest," it makes sense to talk about it as one region.

It doesn't really break into two pieces very well though, unless you just want to just separate the Great Plains, and even then there are issues. I think it makes a bit more sense to think of it as a cluster of overlapping regions, something like:
-Great Plains (KS, NE, SD, ND, arguably the far west of MN, IA, MO. Outside of the Midwest much of OK and TX could fit in too)
-Lower Midwest (IL, IN, OH, MO, Southern Lower Penninsula MI, IA)
-Upper Midwest (MN, WI, UP+Northern Lower Penninsula MI, ND)

Plus odd bits that are kind of distinct, like eastern Ohio, Cincinnati, the Driftless, and whatever is going on in Northern Missouri and Little Dixie.

[Agonized-Statism]

Like any big regional grouping, the Midwest is actually balanced between two sub-regions based on heavy industry and agriculture: the Great Lakes/East North Central/Rust Belt (I've always called it Upper Midwest but apparently that's not accurate) and the Plains/West North Central/Farm Belt. However, there's plenty that the Great Lakes and Plains have in common that makes them one unified Midwest region: very white, very German(ic) American, distrustful of big business and long history of populism and socialism, weaker racial and class hierarchies than the South, particular emphasis on hard work and honesty as opposed to Southern leisure and politeness, generally opposes war, generally more small-minded/provincial, benefits most from protectionism and disproportionately screwed over by neoliberalism and globalization, awful Canadian-sounding accents. There's always been lots of commercial ties between the Plains and the Great Lakes cities too.

Change is a constant, though. A few trends: the conceptualization of the Midwest as the middle of the country in all ways is arguably becoming out-of-date (particularly demographically), Southernization has been eroding the particularities of Midwest culture, and I expect the fortunes of the Plains and Great Lakes to diverge significantly with climate change, the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, deglobalization, and growing environmentalism (Plains people suffer more and the Great Lakes becomes way more diverse and prosperous; the biggest regional divide in a few generations might be a prosperous Northwest/Great Lakes/Northeast versus a devastated Southwest/Plains/South).

[King of Kensington]

Is antiwar sentiment common throughout the Midwest or is it more of a German-Scandinavian-Upper Midwest phenomenon?

[Alben Barkley]

I think it makes sense to split it up into the "Midwest" (Ohio/Michigan/Wisconsin/etc.) and the "Plains" (Kansas/Nebraska/etc.) Politically, culturally, and demographically they are quite different.

[kwabbit]

It's one region with a few sub regions. The four macro-region set up with Northeast (including DC, MD, and DE), the South (including KY, WV, and OK), the West, and the Midwest is clean and logical. Starting on about sub regions needing to be separate makes the exercise pointless.

[David Hume]

If we divide the east coast into New England, Mid Atlantic, and the South, then the Midwest should be two region.

[Alben Barkley]

It's one region with a few sub regions. The four macro-region set up with Northeast (including DC, MD, and DE), the South (including KY, WV, and OK), the West, and the Midwest is clean and logical. Starting on about sub regions needing to be separate makes the exercise pointless.

The official US Census Bureau considers DC, MD, and DE to be Southern, not Northeastern. Which I think is ridiculous today.

[RINO Tom]

I mean, it is clearly one region in at least some sense ... and as far as the US Census regions go, the definition of the Midwest is BY FAR the least controversial and most cohesive of any region.  With that said, there are certainly sub-regions within every region, and the Midwest is no exception.  Personally, I would divide it very neatly up like this:

Great Plains: Very easily defined without much controversy as North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.  I suppose people might want to lump Oklahoma in there, but I honestly find this to only be the case among "true Southerners" who are trying to gatekeep what it means to be part of "the South."  Approximately 0% of people in the Census-defined Midwest would consider Oklahoma to be part of the Midwest.

Big Ten Country: Less cut and dry as the Great Plains, but this forms the core of the Midwest.  In other words, nobody who doesn't belong in an asylum would question that these states are all clearly part of the Midwest.  Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan form the Upper Midwest.  Iowa, Illinois and Indiana form the Lower Midwest.  Ohio does not really fit into either of those categories, but it is still very clearly part of this category as its eastern flank.

Missouri: Kansas City is really part of the Great Plains, St. Louis is part of the Lower Midwest, Southern Missouri is really part of the Upper South, etc.  Given that the population is decently spread out between those areas (as opposed to Illinois, where less than 10% of the population could be said to be in "Southern Illinois"), you can't fit Missouri into a nice category.  However, on a STATEWIDE basis, it has to be considered part of the Midwest.



I am biased, but the Midwest is probably the region that is the easiest to define.  Whenever people want to include a state like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, etc., it is almost always because they are trying to define their own region way too narrowly and just tossing the peripheral states to the Midwest.  However, on a statewide basis Pennsylvania is very clearly more Northeastern than Midwestern.  Kentucky and West Virginia are very clearly more Southern than Midwestern.  

Oklahoma is more interesting, but it is different enough to not be Midwestern, IMO.  If your state has way more Baptists than Mainline Protestants, you just simply are NOT in the Midwest anymore.

[King of Kensington]

The gatekeeping of regions is strange.  Some southerners want "the liberals" of Maryland transferred to the Northeast.  And some Northeasterners want Pennsylvania put in the Midwest because it's too Trumpy and too rust belty to be a "real" Northeastern state.