I would say most of land below St. Louis and Kansas City is Southern. And St. Louis, Kansas City, and the North is Midwestern. The Northern parts of the state are too moderate to be southern, considering how incredibly white they are, like Iowa. The thing I see that always bugs me is that in Northern Missouri most counties went >60% Romney, yet right when you go into Iowa you're immediately into swing/toss-up land. Kind of like the Tennessee/North Carolina thing.
Iowa and Missouri are very different. I'm originally from Southern Iowa, where people speak with a flat accent, but when I was in Northern Missouri, people definitely had a twang.
I do consider Missouri to be a Southern state, culturally (aside from St. Louis and maybe Kansas City).
Huh, thanks for informing me on the accents, never knew.
Click on this and put your cursor at the "counties" box on the left, and look closely. There is a clear, abrupt, change once you leave Iowa. There are Romney >70% counties bordering Romney >50% counties, its just really strange. Same thing with Nebraska, once you leave Iowa, your abruptly into conservative land. I always like to think Iowa has a invisible box around it controlling the state's elections and politics, but I can't get over it.
I know the cultures are different and the way people speak is different, but what I would be interested to know is why does it change so fast across one state border, it doesn't seem to be a progressive change but just an abrupt change. There has to be something unique about Iowa's economy, people, etc. That changes their political views so much from Missouri's in such a short amount of space/land.
