Do Southerners have more state pride?

[jennifat]

Originally Posted by IowanFarmer

Personal experience. I went to high school in Rochester. My brother lives in St. Paul now. Tell a Minnesotan you're from Iowa, and watch the disdain and dismissiveness roll down.

Hell, your post kind of proves my point. "You're too insignificant for our thoughts".

Very personal experience, I presume.

I have yet to hear a single person ever speak badly of Iowa (unlike Wisconsin, which is widely disparaged here). There's nothing about it to dislike, honestly. It's a pleasant place and has a lot of nice little cities I wouldn't mind living in at all. Des Moines eerily reminds me of a mini-Twin Cities, especially in the surrounding suburbs.

For my own experience, I guess I just don't think much about Iowa because I rarely have to travel through it to get anywhere. Most destinations are a drive through the Dakotas or Wisconsin.

[IowanFarmer]

Originally Posted by jas75

Metro Des Moines is also pretty well off compared to the nation in general. It looks like the highest income level in the area is not in Polk, but in Dallas County to the west. If the boundaries were a little further west, Polk would include more of the affluent neighborhoods and thus have its statistical profile appear stronger.

I think Minnesota and Iowa may have a bit more affinity for some of their remaining neighbors rather than each other as they have no shared metropolitan areas. Minnesota has more obvious links with Wisconsin and North Dakota in particular, and Iowa with Illinois and Nebraska.

Regarding Wichita Falls ... Lawton would be the city in Oklahoma that is more of its peer. Definitely not Tulsa.

Could be some truth to this. The Iowa/Minnesota border is very remote from a population standpoint. The raw # of people who commute back and forth is low, and my viewpoint is probably skewed by living most of my life along it.

Rochester certainly has a well above average economy due to Mayo Clinic and IBM along with other employers. The median household income is well above that of Polk County, IA (Des Moines). Obviously, Rochester is a smaller metro area than Des Moines but punches well above its weight compared to the majority of peer cities its size.

Rochester has a great economy, for the reasons you noted. It has very little going on culturally for a city of it's size and affluence. It frequently tends to lag behind cultural trends, and doesn't have much in the way of established local cultural offerings. It's gotten a lot better in the last 5 years, but prior to that it was a place dominated by box stores, strip malls, and chain restaurants. Des Moines is a much larger metro, with a diverse economy as well, and cultural offerings that are above and beyond it's peers.

I personally don't think they are apples to apples, and find it unfair to compare them. I was doing so to point out Minnesotan ignorance/arrogance/insularity. No one who has spent time in both cities would think Rochester has more cultural offerings or vibrancy unless they had a heavy bias. But there's a strong perception in MN that Rochester has more going on than any place in Iowa, and that is absurd.

[The941]

Originally Posted by TarHeelTerritory

Do you think Southerners, on average, have more pride in their home state? Are they more likely to display symbols of state pride such as their state flag? What about articles of clothing? From my experiences in N.C., state pride is a pretty big thing. What about elsewhere?

In a word, NO

[Boston Shudra]

In my experience, Rhode Islanders have the most state pride of anyone I’ve met from any state. However, my experience in the south is limited to the Carolinas. I’ll also say that people from the Carolinas (imo!) have more state pride than people from MA or CT. So maybe southern states have more pride on average.