I live in central Pennsylvania, slightly west of the Susquehanna River. I can get to some Jersey shore points in about three hours. I feel like I live on the East coast. But according to a recent poll, about 10% of Pennsylvanians think they live in the Midwest.
Here is Alfred Lubrano at The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Nearly 10% of Pennsylvanians believe they live in the Midwest.
They are 100% wrong.
Despite this disorienting finding from Middle West Review and Emerson College Polling, the U.S. Census Bureau tells us the commonwealth is very much a Mid-Atlantic state, close kin to New Jersey and New York — and not so much Illinois and Nebraska.
Before dismissing roughly 1.3 million Keystone citizens as being cartographically impaired, however, consider that lots of other folks seem to think the state is Midwestern, too.
We tend to hear this canard more frequently this time of year, when election talk links swing-state Pennsylvania to Rust Belt sisters Michigan and Wisconsin as part of the so-called blue wall of traditionally Democratic-leaning states, worth an invaluable 44 Electoral College votes come Nov. 5.
Then there are those who say that if Pennsylvania isn’t officially Midwestern, certainly the western portion of the state is, at least culturally.
“Pittsburgh is more like Ohio than Philadelphia,” says Steel City real estate agent Mark McClinchie on YouTube. His evidence? “We say pop, not soda.” And, a person named Kristen that he included on his video enthused: “There’s nothing Mid-Atlantic about Pittsburgh. People are kind, loyal, and stuck in their ways.”
More hot-dish than hoagie, could the geographically left side of Pennsylvania be Midwestern after all? We take a look:
First of all, who says Pennsylvania is in the Midwest?
Discussing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on the New York Times podcast The Daily on July 22, Peter Baker, the newspaper’s chief White House correspondent, said: “There is a concern by a lot of Democrats about how she will play in some of these Midwestern states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that are so key to the election.”
Likely an inadvertent slip of the tongue, his mislocation nevertheless lends credence to this whole Pennsylvania-is-not-really-where-we-think-it-is thing.
“I absolutely hear that Pennsylvania is in the Midwest quite often,” said sociologist Michael Glass, director of the urban studies program at the University of Pittsburgh. “You’ll see it on social media as well.”
Quoting an article from the Age, a Melbourne newspaper, @glografik posted on X, “[Former President Donald] Trump is … losing his edge among white women — the very group that helped propel him to office in 2016, particularly in the Midwest battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.”
A poster on the r/PoliticalDiscussion subreddit wondered, “What is the likelihood that the Midwest states of MI, WI and PA will remain swing states …?”
Just which states are considered the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 12-state Midwest region comprises two divisions. There’s the East North Central division of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin; and the West North Central division of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
Some folks will quibble: “I’m from Minnesota,” communication professor David Kahl Jr. of Penn State Behrend in Erie said. “People say Ohio is almost the Midwest, but I don’t consider it to be. At all.”
As for what constitutes the Mid-Atlantic — it gets tricky.
The Census Bureau lists just three Mid-Atlantic states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. It places eight states in the South Atlantic division: Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. The District of Columbia is also in that group.
But the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the Mid-Atlantic comprises the three states listed by the Census Bureau, as well as Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. And the U.S. General Services Administration declares that the region is Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, and just parts of Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia. To confuse matters further, the U.S. Geological Survey lists even more states, including parts of New England.
What can make things more exasperating is the Federal Reserve Bank’s decision to cleave Pennsylvania into East Coast-Midwest categories, placing Philadelphia in one district and Pittsburgh as well as 19 Western Pennsylvania counties in the Cleveland district.
Thus, from a federal vantage, Pennsylvania becomes both a Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern state.
Read the rest here.
When I lived there (near Philadelphia–Bucks County), folk would joke about everything between Pittsburgh and Philly as “Alabama, with teeth.” If we were to classify every place you see Confederate flags as in some way “Southern,” they might have had a pont. I recall George Wallace being quite popular with a lot of my schoolmates and their parents back in the day.
Colin Woodard considers Pennsylvania to be the source and part of the Midlands “nation” that stretches are far west as Nebraska, and this nation is fairly consistent with what many people identify as midwestern, culturally. So those who consider Pennsylvania midwestern may be on to something. (He also grants the northern tier and most of the northern midwest states to “Yankeedom,” extending from New England westward, making states like Michigan and Minnesota somewhat different from, say, Ohio and Iowa.)
I’ve done the roadtrip from upstate New York to rural northern Illinois many, many times, as well as plenty of trips further west. It always felt to me like the Midwest started when we got to the farmlands of Ohio, and continued right up until the Rockies were in sight.
I’m from Pittsburgh and I wouldn’t consider western Pennsylvania to be the Midwest. The terrain is too hilly. Industry is still important. We have our own dialect. At one time, however, Pittsburgh was considered the gateway to the west. That’s about as close as it gets.
In terms of my genealogy, my ancestors landed in PA and VA. Over time the ancestors moved from PA and VA first to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and finally to MN. Some did not stop until they reached the west coast. Therefore I do not consider PA as the midwest. PA is in the east. As government agencies can not decide where PA belongs; I will continue in my belief that PA is an eastern state.