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Kansas is 100% Midwestern.
Missouri is Midwestern, with the exception of the extreme Southeastern portion of the State.
West Virginia, IMO, is the only regionless State, as has been mentioned.
The study is not publicly available, but here is the intro.
I grew up in SE Missouri, and I feel more at home in West Tennessee than I do in much of Missouri. I consider MO to be Midwestern as a whole, but the bootheel is the south in every way except geography. The rest of SE Missouri is mixed.
I think what the OP is picking up on is that Kansas and Missouri are the only two Midwestern states that don't have an upper Midwest component to them. To me, that is what sets them apart.
I grew up in SE Missouri, and I feel more at home in West Tennessee than I do in much of Missouri. I consider MO to be Midwestern as a whole, but the bootheel is the south in every way except geography. The rest of SE Missouri is mixed.
I think what the OP is picking up on is that Kansas and Missouri are the only two Midwestern states that don't have an upper Midwest component to them. To me, that is what sets them apart.
Kansas and Missouri lack the northern components, but have more influences from the South overall.
I grew up in SE Missouri, and I feel more at home in West Tennessee than I do in much of Missouri. I consider MO to be Midwestern as a whole, but the bootheel is the south in every way except geography. The rest of SE Missouri is mixed.
I think what the OP is picking up on is that Kansas and Missouri are the only two Midwestern states that don't have an upper Midwest component to them. To me, that is what sets them apart.
I can see that. When you look at the Midwest in closer detail, there really are some cultural sub regions within.
For example, you have the north woods thing going on in parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the UP of Michigan that separate it economically and culturally from the rest of the region. You have a Plains Upper Midwest of the Dakotas, Minnesota south and west of I-94, Iowa, and Nebraska that have some distinct Northern influences, but are really different from the north woods, and anything east of the Mississippi. Kansas and Missouri have a lot in common with those places, but lack of some of the more northern components. I'd imagine there's much less Scandinavian influence there (which is what I feel is the root of the difference between the northern and southern Plains).
I don't understand why people think we have to put hard geographic borders to define cultural regions. You can't just cross a border and all of a sudden everything is completely different culturally. As you drive from the midwest to the south, there is a slow fade from the things we identify with a midwest culture to the things we identify with a southern culture. As you move north to south it can go from 90% midwestern/10% southern to 10% midwestern/90%southern, for example. This change doesn't just happen suddenly once you cross a border. I would consider Missouri and Kansas to simply be where the two cultures blend from one to the other.
I don't understand why people think we have to put hard geographic borders to define cultural regions. You can't just cross a border and all of a sudden everything is completely different culturally. As you drive from the midwest to the south, there is a slow fade from the things we identify with a midwest culture to the things we identify with a southern culture. As you move north to south it can go from 90% midwestern/10% southern to 10% midwestern/90%southern, for example. This change doesn't just happen suddenly once you cross a border. I would consider Missouri and Kansas to simply be where the two cultures blend from one to the other.
Some people clearly aren't mentally flexible enough to grasp that.
kansas is 100% midwestern.
Missouri is midwestern, with the exception of the extreme southeastern portion of the state.
West virginia, imo, is the only regionless state, as has been mentioned.
Both Missouri and Kansas are clearly Midwestern to me. Yes, Missouri has Southern influences in the bootheel but that's a small portion of the state. Most of Missouri, including Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, and Jefferson City are Midwestern to me. Nobody I know from Missouri considers themselves a Southerner or expresses Southern pride.
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