As a South Carolinian, let me confirm that we do not deserve a positive rating. I love my state, but its government is run by rich idiots.
To be clear, that is still less than 50% approval rating. The only state apparently to get over 50% is Hawaii and not by much.
Every state is positive! score is favourable - unfavourable. Hawaii would have been 76.5 vs 23.5.
Oh you’re right! My bad I didn’t read the fine print.
Lol, give me a break and show me the data sources.
I’m surprised that people are surprised by this.
West Virginia somehow scores higher than california?? Has anyone actually been to west virginia?
I’m guessing the survey responder pool was “whoever is at this Midwest bingo hall at 2pm on a Tuesday.”
Oklahoma has way better meth labs than California 👍
Yeah, this seems wrong. Tennessee definitely isn’t that good.
It must be because of the smoky mountains… only thing cool about this place.
That’s a wild score for Florida. Do people just like Walt Disney World that much?
How in the hell does Oregon and Washington get mid like that? What’d we ever do to you but enjoy our trees and rain?
How do you like a big dumb desert and deserts little cousin more than us???
I think people just don’t know much about the PNW. Seattle produced some rock bands and companies in the '90s and Portland got a TV show that ended years ago, but that’s about it. We just don’t make much noise right now.
They both had a ton of popular bands and companies.
I think the rating might be a easily of national politics.
But both Oregon and Washington are mostly big dumb desert. They’ve got everything!
The collective South Loud enough for the people in the back, y’all: Thank GOD for Mississippi!
This is actually one of the best maps on here in a while. If you know the US discourse, you can clearly read the stereotypes, political bubbles and straight-up ignorance of the various different people that were surveyed.
Illinois gets dinged because of racist narrative around Chicago. Montana does better than the rest of the midwest because it’s romaticised. The people who hate California are a different bunch than the ones who hate Illinois or, for the most part, Alabama. NJ is mainly known from jokes at their expense by media-powerhouse New York. Few people know enough about South Dakota to care. DC just absorbs opinions of the feds.
I don’t get the love-on for North Carolina and Pennsylvania, I guess.
I *don’t* get the love-on for North Carolina and Pennsylvania, I guess.
Not sure about Pennsylvania, but I think North Carolina is rated so favorably because conservatives like it because it’s part of the South, and liberals like it because it sucks less than most of the rest of the South due to the Research Triangle. (Georgia gets a similar boost because of Atlanta, but lesser because it gets extra hate from conservatives because of civil rights / Black culture.)
Montana does better than the rest of the midwest because it’s romaticised.
So, folks, are we just gonna gloss over this guy calling Montana “Midwest?”
Midwest, at least culturally, can spread from the slopes of the Rockies to the slopes of Appalachia.
I am of the strong opinion that Aurora is Midwest and Denver is west.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Although I did know there’s a great deal of controversy over how far east if goes, and people laugh at New Yorkers for thinking of Cleveland as basically the same as Kansas.
In Canada, the Prairies go from the Rockies to the Shield region where things get stony and boggy. And extend north until it’s too forested for the descriptor to apply, maybe a quarter of the way to the Arctic coast on average (so it’s mostly taiga nd tundra with just a little bit of farmable area).
Is it not? What would you call it? It doesn’t even end at the Canadian border, really, although we start calling it “prairies” to be distinct.
Source: Live here, have seen that border.
In the US, the “Midwest” means the area from Ohio to the Dakotas (and with a southern limit along the Ohio river and southern border of Missouri and Kansas).
Montana is full-blown “West” (or sometimes “Mountain West” or a member of the “Mountain States,” if you want to distinguish it from the “West Coast” or “Pacific Northwest.”)
If you can grow wheat there, it’s the prairie. Therefore the Midwest. Just how the eastern parts of Colorado are the furthest west parts of the mid west. Unless you want to exclude the prairie states entirely from the mid west, which i wouldn’t do.
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ Take it up with the U.S. Census Bureau. It’s their definition, not mine.
The census bureau did not invent the term, nor are they in charge of it.
Lemmy user sem didn’t invent the term, nor are they in charge of it either. But the census bureau has way more precidence than you have ever managed. Take the loss and move on bud.
That has never been the definition of the Midwest. If you want to go by the census definition, you are wrong.
If you approach if from a cultural or demographic standpoint, you are still wrong.
I would argue that the Midwest ends at the banks of the Mississippi river and maybe carries halfway into the western states. Past that it is a whole nother place.
Montana is mountain west or west. Always has been.
Is West what the census calls it, too?
How many people do you know from the great plains states?
I have family from Kansas and Colorado, who worked the wheat harvests going from north Texas through to the Dakotas and eastern Montana. Eastern Colorado and western Kansas are not very different at all. I don’t see why you would want to say a cultural definition is incorrect when it’s people’s self identity.
“How many people do you know from the great plains states?”
All of them. It’s where I live. It’s where I have lived the majority of my life. But I’m also well traveled and can assure you, there are cultural differences between the regions you are conflating.
Once again, you are wrong. Thank you.
I’ve never seen or heard Montana called Midwest. It’s more Rockies or Northwest. Eastern half could be considered Great Plains-ish.
I can say for sure none of it’s very Northwestern; even eastern Washington is more like Idaho than the coast.
Rockies is fair, for the part that they actually run through, which seems to be more like a third of the area and inevitably less populated. I guess that’s the part they like to advertise, though, and clearly it has worked.
People like the outer banks and It’s Always Sunny. Midwesterners also HATE Chicago/Illinois since that’s the biggest city in the area.
My biggest ahock is that Texas polls so high. Most people who don’t live there absolutely despise Texas in my experience.
What about the Twin Cities? They’re also a major center, and in a “more” midwestern area in some sense, although Chicago is probably bigger.
Chicago is about 3 times the size of the Twin Cities and is generally more well known and payed attention to. The Twin Cities mostly get ignored by the rest of the country, unless something like the murder of George Floyd happens, so that doesn’t move the needle against Minnesota. The only people who really hate them are people in rural Minnesota, but most of them have a lot of state pride so still have a favorable view of Minnesota.
Not sure on Pennsylvania. But for North Carolina, my guess would be the research triangle helping boost it?
The Pennsylvania part is really mystifying. Is it riding on the popularity of cheese steaks?
Probably more OBX and the mountains. The “research triangle” is boring af and is just cookie cutter neighborhoods and chain restaurants
What are the chances Washington gets dinged for having the same name as DC?
To give them some credit, Americans know basic facts about their own geography, at least. Washington ends up with roughly the same favourability as Oregon here, and the two states do seem awfully similar.
Now, knowing that DC is actually full of ordinary, mostly black people, or that Montana isn’t very different from North Dakota? Maybe not. That’s beyond just map facts.
Seattle and Portland do make up the PNW hippie culture, which I’m sure plenty of respondents find unfavorable
I don’t believe this at all. Who did they ask?
clearly not me, I couldn’t get out of N Carolina fast enough
As a lifelong southerner, NC is my favorite southern state. I’ve lived in SC, FL, NC, VA, TN. I absolutely love Asheville. Granted, I lived there as a youngin, and have only visited Asheville and a few other places as an adult. But my God don’t I love Asheville.
Asheville is basically anti NC. I agree that mountain hippies are great, but as you move east you go from fucked up tobacco shit, to Fuck Duke, to fucked up military industrial complex, to tourist hellscape. Charlotte is ok, but it’s like if you took a real city and made it optimized for 7’ tall pickup trucks.
The scenery is the only thing keeping TN green i assure yall
and Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton is a national treasure.
Dolly Parton is a gift to humanity.
Midwesterners absolutely love Nashville for some reason. It’s where everyone wants to have the bachelorette parties these days
Charleston get too expensive?
As a Californian, you’re all just jealous. I will sit atop my pile of avocados and wildfires and functional economy.
Don’t forget, we also have Disneyland.
Go hang out with Hawaii.
Alaska can come too.
THE AEEND!
Finally a map that isn’t just a population distribution.
NC let’s fucking gooooo!
Recently returned to my ancestral homeland of SC, and cheer wine (and actually decent barbecue) have been the local highlights.
RAISE UP
I’m surprised Jersey is rated so low relative to Texas having lived in both states.
Georgia deserves its score. Georgia is great aside from the Atlanta traffic design.
I’m surprised Texas is so high, but I’m not surprised that NJ is low, isn’t there an old meme to the effect that New Jersey smells bad/ is full of toxic industrial chemicals or something?
Texas may have some crap politics statewide, but the major cities are top notch and Hill Country is a national treasure, same goes for the brisket and the old style country music.
One of these days I’ll get down to Big Bend and up to the mountains in the west.
I recently got down to Austin and was lucky enough to see the bats fly out from the bridge downtown. Millions of bats, was a sight to behold.
I’m in the process of preparing for a move to San Antonio, and the thing I’m genuinely scared about is the politics. This admin, the governor, being gay, on the left… The whole idea is very frightening, to be honest. I’m hearing good things about San Antonio, though, and I’m hoping being in a city will insulate me from the other stuff a bit
the new mayor is openly gay, if that’s any reassurance to you.
There is! They even joke about it in Futurama.
Conservatives are more tribal, and will vote favorably for “their” states and unfavorably for “liberal” states with more consistency than liberals. Hence conservatives’ like of Texas and dislike of Cali shines through, while a liberal would probably think that there are some things to like about Texas and dislike about Cali, and get washed out in the data.
New Jersey’s negative reputation is almost entirely due to people from NYC jeering at an outgroup
People from Philadelphia and the whole of Delaware also routinely dunk on NJ for many reasons.
- Can’t pump their own gas.
- Can’t turn left.
- Gotta pay a toll to get out.
- It’s a literal swamp.
- Every single aspect of the Meadowlands.
- It’s a literal swamp.
- Every single aspect of the Meadowlands.
Pine Barrens: Am I a joke to you?
Seriously though, NJ has some seriously varied ecology from the Delaware basin to the Piedmont, the Skylands, and more. People from outside just don’t think much about it because their experience of NJ is the clusterfuck that is flying into Newark Airport and driving to Manhattan through the meadowlands sprawl.
All I know is at least when the world ends I’ll at least make for a good Warboy; if I can drive in this mess unscathed then I can definitely handle the wasteland.
NYC has so much more influence that my comment still stands.
Plus, NJ is Philadelphia’s collective weed man, and would be more bearable to share a state with than rural PA (see: SEPTA funding issues [and Pittsburgh is having issues with their public transit too])
(Percieved Natural Beauty) - (Political Unfavorability)
Forreal! Lol
Jersey is the only state where if you tell someone you’re from there, they will tell you why they hate it (and the poor soul probably got stuck in traffic there once while passing through).
I think my response of “Good, don’t come back then” probably makes them even more unfavorable to NJ lmfao
aside from the Atlanta traffic design.
Atlanta (the city proper) is getting better, despite GDOT’s best efforts to sabotage it. It’s the metro Atlanta suburbs that really suck.
I’m still butthurt the Atlanta suburbs managed to block the MARTA expansion that was voted for and funded.
Alaska makes sense as the most popular in perception I suppose
Edit: I didn’t even see Hawaii there! Just popular due to tropical features judging by comparison to other politically aligned states, and those with similarly extremely racist backgrounds
Hawaii is racist?
So who was the sample group? And what what the size? Also what was the criteria? This just seems weirdly subjective.
Sample group: 2073 adult citizens Question was just “do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the following states”
Yeah I’m not particularly impressed, but also NC LETS GO
