So first a little background on me... I grew up in downstate Illinois and my wife is from small town Iowa. We represent the 2 states that polled pretty well in the
midwestern version.
Growing up in the midwest, we wanted to see more of the country and lived for about 3 years in South Carolina and the last 4 in Oklahoma. So we have a pretty good experience with 'the South' as well.
/backstory
To me, its not about the mason dixon line or the civil war. Lots has changed since then. When looking at the south today, I think most would anchor it in the MS, AL, GA, SC corridor. that is a core of states that has a lot of history and has continued to exemplify many of the things often termed as 'southern values' or 'southern charm'. Outside of that you have another level of states that are pretty southern in nature: LA, AK, TN, and NC.
For me, that is the most generic response. Many other states have a good argument, but I leave out for the following reasons:
Texas has always been its own monolith. The state pride Texans exude is about their state and their state only. Additionally, in the 80's as midwest factory jobs dried up, lots of northerners moved down into the big cities and made enough of a dent in it that its not quite the same.
Florida has had too much immigration from both northern retirees and Latin America I think most agree that overall its not really similar to the south.
Kentucky and Virginia and West Virginia I think have solid cases and I wouldn't argue too much against them, but I think Virginia has had a lot of northerners move down to shift it and the rural parts of both states to me are more 'Appalachian' than southern.
Overall I do think you guys hit on the more defining characteristic moving forward: rural versus urban. Even in the core states like Georgia or Louisiana, you have metros like Atlanta and New Orleans that are very different than the surrounding areas. In South Carolina, we lived in a town named Florence. The city itself only claims 35-40k in population due to weird annexation rules and it was a metro area of about 100k. Yet most of the residents were people that grew up in all the surrounding small towns. In Florence's case, they maintained the small town identity and old southern influence even as it grew. But it seems to be about the limit. Any of the other larger cities had much less of a southern feel. Myrtle Beach is a tourist destination and had shifted to accomodate that; Columbia is a college town and was more open and liberal.
I better stop though, this post is way too long.
