[boxy310]

I had a very bitter argument about whether Kansas was Midwestern or not. An important distinction is that what's now considered the "Midwest" used to be just called the "West", and that the Great Plains formed a natural barrier of relatively lower rainfall that settlers headed out to Oregon or California would be crossing over before they hit the Mountain West. As a result, settlers in Kansas had lots of natural connections to Missouri, which is fairly clearly in the Midwest.

[ovulator]

I always thought that the Missouri river was kind of the western border to the midwest. So Kansas City, which straddles the river is still in the Midwest, and a very large chunk of Kansas' population lives there and are midwestern, the western chunk of the state is much different.