In a recent survey, 612 Americans were asked, “If you had to divide the 50 U.S. states into exactly five general regions, what would they be?”
Geographer Alexandr Trubetskoy, who last showed us how much snow is required to cancel schools in each U.S. county, created maps based on those responses to answer questions like, “What is the Midwest?” and, “Is Missouri part of the South?”
Based on the answers, the following map was created…
To more accurately show states over which there was considerable disagreement about the region they belonged to, Trubetskoy also created a map with each state shaded to reflect how strongly it fit into a given region.
In this map, for instance, it’s clear that there’s strong disagreement over whether Texas is part of the Frontier or South…
To break it down even further, Trubetskoy created a separate map for each region, revealing some surprising results. There are people who would call Iowa a Pacific state and Louisiana part of the Frontier…
The five regions represented above were just the five primary regions chosen by the majority of people who were surveyed. Six percent of respondents identified a Big Sky region, while four percent identified an Atlantic or Mid-Atlantic region…
Of course, all of these regional boundaries are subject to opinion, so…do you agree with the results? Where would you place your state?