US Regions & Subregions

The US Census Bureau sorts the 50 states and the District of Columbia into two nested systems: 4 regions and, inside them, 9 divisions. Almost every argument about American regions comes from mixing the two up. When a news report says the Midwest it means the Census region of 12 states. When an agricultural report says East North Central it means a division of 5 of them. Both are correct and they are not the same list. Every state belongs to exactly one division and one region, and no state is ever split between them.

The 4 US regions

The 9 US divisions

Division	Region	States	2020 population
New England	Northeast	6	15,116,205
Middle Atlantic	Northeast	3	42,492,943
East North Central	Midwest	5	47,368,533
West North Central	Midwest	7	21,616,921
South Atlantic	South	8 + DC	66,089,734
East South Central	South	4	19,402,234
West South Central	South	4	40,774,139
Mountain	West	8	24,919,150
Pacific	West	5	53,669,422

How the four regions compare

The national count on April 1, 2020 was 331,449,281. The South held 126,266,107 of that, the West 78,588,572, the Midwest 68,985,454 and the Northeast 57,609,148, so the South alone is a bit over 38 percent of the country and the Northeast is about 17 percent. Land runs almost exactly the opposite way. The West covers roughly 1,873,000 square miles, close to half the United States, while the Northeast covers about 181,000 square miles, under 5 percent. Growth between the 2010 and 2020 censuses split the same way: the South grew 10.2 percent and the West 9.2 percent, against 4.1 percent in the Northeast and 3.1 percent in the Midwest. That showed up immediately in Congress. Texas gained two House seats in the 2020 apportionment, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon gained one each, and California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia each lost one. New York lost its seat by 89 residents.

Where the classification comes from

The four regions and nine divisions have been used in essentially their present form since 1910. The divisions themselves have barely moved since: Alaska and Hawaii were added to the Pacific division when they became states in 1959, and in June 1984 the region then called North Central was renamed the Midwest. The District of Columbia is counted inside the South Atlantic division, which is why federal statistics treat DC as part of the South. Puerto Rico and the other territories sit outside the scheme entirely and are not assigned to any region or division.

Other systems people confuse with this one

Several federal agencies use groupings that look similar and are not. The Bureau of Economic Analysis uses 8 regions with different names and different boundaries: New England, Mideast, Great Lakes, Plains, Southeast, Southwest, Rocky Mountain and Far West. Maryland is Mideast at the BEA and South at the Census, which is enough to make two federal tables disagree about the same state. The Federal Reserve uses 12 districts drawn in 1914 that cut straight through state lines, and Missouri is the only state containing two Reserve Banks, at St. Louis and Kansas City. Elementary school textbooks usually teach a 5-region model of Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest and West, which splits the Census South in two and moves Texas out of it. None of these are wrong, but only the Census version is what news, polling and government data mean by region.

The states people argue about

Maryland and Delaware are South in the Census scheme because they lie below the Mason and Dixon line, surveyed between 1763 and 1767, but in everyday usage both are Mid-Atlantic, and Statedoku's own puzzle data files them under the Northeast. Missouri is Midwest at the Census, in the West North Central division, even though it was a slave state, borders Arkansas and sits south of Iowa. Texas and Oklahoma are South, in West South Central, which surprises anyone who calls them the Southwest. West Virginia is South Atlantic without touching the Atlantic. Alaska and Hawaii are Pacific by ocean rather than by adjacency. Virginia is the mirror image of Maryland, filed as South by the Census while its northern suburbs function as part of the Washington metro.

Every state by division

New England: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut.
Middle Atlantic: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.
East North Central: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin.
West North Central: Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas.
South Atlantic: Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, plus the District of Columbia.
East South Central: Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi.
West South Central: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas.
Mountain: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico.
Pacific: Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii.

→ Full guide: The 4 US regions explained