I've lived on the Midwest pretty much my whole life and Illinois and Minnesota are generally Democrat states with large city populations. The other state I've lived in, Iowa, historically has been pretty tolerant (but that is changing recently) and was the fourth state to legalize gay marriage. I know people from a lot of small towns where they were taught evolution and were not anti-intellectual at all. The Midwest covers an absolutely huge area and while some people follow this stereotype probably the majority of people in the Midwest don't.