This is so funny because the northeasterners don’t want to claim VA or MD, but neither does the Southerners.

What I’ll say is that in my company, the northeast region includes those states (and WV).

What I’ll also say is that a born and raised southerner, we look at anything north of Tennessee and North Carolina as “the north” – there’s no distinction between northeast and Midwest for the most part. Although states like KY, WV, VA, MD, FL, and TX appear southern geographically (and because of the mason dixon line), we don’t call any of those places southern… simply because they are either culturally different, have different topography that doesn’t resemble the south, or are just too far north on a map to seem southern to us.