Regional definitions vary slightly among sources. This map reflects the Midwestern United States as defined by theU.S. Census Bureau, which is followed in many sources.Divisions of the Midwest by the U.S. Census Bureau intoEast North Central andWest North Central, separated largely by theMississippi River.
Chicago, Illinois, is the largest city in the Midwest, and third largest city nationwide
The wordMidwest has been in common use since the late 19th century. Other names for the area are no longer used. These names include the "Northwest" or "Old Northwest", "Mid-America," or "the Heartland".
The land in the Midwest is generally thought of as consisting of rolling hills with some mountainous and flat regions like the Great Plains states. The far northern part of the Upper Mississippi valley is known as theDriftless Area, a region of very rugged hills centered primarily western Wisconsin, though the region includes small parts of northeast Iowa, Southeast Minnesota, and northwest Illinois. TheOcooch Mountains of Wisconsin contain the highest peaks in the Driftless Region. Also, the northern part of theOzark mountain range is in southern Missouri.Prairies cover most of the states west of theMississippi River, with buttes, rugged rocky areas, and hills in western North Dakota and South Dakota (Theodore Roosevelt National Park andBadlands National Park), and the foothills of theRockies in western Kansas and Nebraska. Less rain falls in the western Midwest than in the eastern part. This causes different types of prairies. Most of the Midwest can now be called either "urban areas" or "agricultural areas". Areas in northern Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, and theOhio River valley are not very developed.
Midwesterners are sometimes viewed as open, friendly, and straightforward, or sometimes stereotyped as stubborn and uncultured. People view the Midwest as a very open place with lots of corn and wheat, very dry crops and sometimes simple people. Midwest values were shaped by religious beliefs and the agricultural values from the people who settled in the area.
Between 19 and 29% of the Midwest isCatholic. 14% of the people in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, 22% in Missouri and 5% in Minnesota areBaptists. 22-24% of people in Wisconsin and Minnesota areLutherans. 1% or less of the people in the Midwest areJewish andMuslim, with slightly more Jewish or Muslim people in major cities, such asChicago,Detroit, andCleveland. 16% of the Midwest's population do not follow any religion.
Because of 20th centuryAfrican Americanmigration from the South, many African Americans live in most of the area's large cities. However, there are still more African Americans living in theSouthern United States than in the Midwest. The mix ofindustry andcultures in those cities led to new types of music in the 20th century in the Midwest, includingjazz,blues,rock and roll. Jazz was invented in New Orleans, but started to develop and grow in Kansas City.Techno music came fromDetroit andhouse music and blues came fromChicago.
Today the population of the Midwest is 65,971,974, or 22.2% of the total population of the United States.
Politics in the Midwest is divided, With some states leaning liberal and many others conservative. The Great Lakes area, which has more large cities than the rest of the Midwest, tends to be the mostliberal area of the Midwest. However, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and the Dakotas, the rural Great Plains states, are moreconservative. Traditionally, the larger cities tend to lean to the left while those in the rural countryside lean farther right.
As of 2020, in the Senate, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota are each represented by 2 Democrats. Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are represented by 1 Democrat and 1 Republican each. The Dakotas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska are all represented by 2 Republicans each. The final tally is 9 Democrats and 15 Republicans.
This section needs to beupdated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.
As of 2020, Minnesota's is the only state legislature in the nation where 1 house is controlled by Republicans and the other by Democrats. Illinois´s is the only state legislature in the Midwest where both houses are controlled by Democrats; all the other states have Republican-controlled legislatures.
Theaccents of the Midwest are often clearly different from the accents of theSouth and many urban areas of the American Northeast. The accent of most of the Midwest is thought by many to be "standard" American English. Many national radio and television shows in the U.S. like this accent more than many other accents. This may have started because many television show hosts — such asWalter Cronkite,Johnny Carson,David Letterman,Tom Brokaw andCasey Kasem — came from this area.
In some parts of the Midwest, the accents are quite different from the "neutral" accent of the rest of the Midwest. These accents usually are because of the heritage of the area. For example,Minnesota, westernWisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula have strongScandinavian accents, which get stronger the farther north one goes. Many parts ofMichigan haveDutch-flavored accents. Also, people fromChicago are known to have their own "nasal" accent. The same is true ofSt. Louis. In the most southern parts of the Midwest, such as southern Indiana, Southern accents are common in addition to the standard Midwest accent. The same can be said of Southern Illinois, particularly below U.S. Highway 50 and south of St. Louis. Missouri is also an example of a Midwest state with southern culture. Missourians usually have either a Southern or Midwestern accent, or a combined dialect of both, but accents tend to be distinctly Southern in the Southeastern and Bootheel sections of the state.
Buley, R. Carlyle.The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period 1815-1840 2 vol (1951), Pulitzer Prize
Cayton, Andrew R. L.Midwest and the Nation (1990)
Cayton, Andrew R. L. and Susan E. Gray, Eds.The American Midwest: Essays on Regional History. (2001)
Frederick; John T. ed.Out of the Midwest: A Collection of Present-Day Writing (1944) literary excerpts
Garland, John H.The North American Midwest: A Regional Geography (1955)
Jensen, Richard.The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (1971)
Fred A. Shannon, "The Status of the Midwestern Farmer in 1900".The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Vol. 37, No. 3. (Dec., 1950), pp. 491–510.in JSTOR
Richard Sisson, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Cayton, eds.The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006), 1916 pp of articles by scholars on all topics covering the 12 states;ISBN978-0-253-34886-9
Meyer, David R. "Midwestern Industrialization and the American Manfucaturing Belt in the Nineteenth Century". Vol. 49, No. 4 (Dec., 1989) pp. 921–937.The Journal of Economic History,https://www.jstor.org/stable/2122744.
