Contentious issue I know, but recently I’ve encountered a number of people who believe that Ohio (and sometimes Indiana and Michigan) is not truly part of the Midwest. Which to me is preposterous since I’ve always considered Ohio the most quintessentially Midwestern state. Midwest to me has always been very nearly synonymous with rust belt, but it seems there are a fair number of people who place the Midwest more in what I’d call the Great Plains, or Greater Minnesota. So I’m wondering where do you all place the Midwest.
Historically, it derives from the Northwest Territory, which stretched from Ohio in the east to Illinois, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota in the west. It was (poorly) relabeled, and retained the West part of its name instead of the North part, which is strange since the concept of manifest destiny was already in use since at least the 1840s, which argued for the inevitability of westward expansion to the Pacific Ocean.
This neither lines up with the Midwest census area, nor other cultural ideas of the Midwest, both which include parts of the great plains region.
Source: state history classes from inside the Midwest