Heartland is an American term referring to states of the Union that – as in the words of one commentator – "don't touch an ocean,"[1] whether the Atlantic or Pacific. At least as early as 2010, however, the term Heartland is used in a non-derogatory sense to not only refer to the Midwestern United States, but also states of the Bible Belt and any other states belonging to the so-called red states.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the mean center of population in the U.S. in 2010 was in or around Texas County, Missouri. In 2000 it had been northeast from there, in Phelps County, Missouri. It is projected for the mean center of population to leave the MidWest and enter the Western U.S. by the middle of the twenty-first century.[2] (Note that when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union in 1960, the geographic center of the United States moved from Smith County, Kansas to Butte County, South Dakota.)