78% of people polled in Ohio believe they are midwestern. People living on that border in Western Pennsylvania might identify geographically or culturally as midwestern, so 9% isn’t that surprising. Now if you broke it down and it showed that people living near Philly thought they were midwestern, that would be laughable.

Have you met anyone from Western Pennsylvania? You'd understand a number of them not knowing where they are on a map!

Lol I kid. Western PA, aka Pennsyltucky, is our Florida Man territory.

Ohio I definitely consider the start of the Midwest.

The others are right though mentioning the obscene number of rebel flags in PA though. My brother was guilty of it for a while in sad to say too. I'm in the Southeast, the most metropolitan part of the state, and they're all over. They're usually hung next to the MAGA stuff, which I'm sure comes as little surprise. Honestly I'd probably prefer the stars and bars to the Trump crap because at least the flag is aesthetically less ugly visually, and the person flying it could just be ignorant or is at least being honest about their beliefs instead of the poorly veiled hate the MAGA trash represents.

Arkansas was the surprising state to me. I guess I just don't ever think about anything related to Arkansas so I lump it in with the Midwest instead of the South, which I think of as the tourist destination states.

I think it probably has to do with the overlap between the Midwest and the rust belt.