What is 'upstate' New York?

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- What is "upstate" New York defined as? Is it everything north of Poughkeepsie, Westchester, New York City, or none of the above? I did a deep dive to find the answer, but people have many differing opinions and seem to be quite passionate about the topic.

First, let's look at the different regions of New York to start. According to the Empire State Department website, there are 10 defined regions of the state: Western New York, the Finger Lakes, the Southern Tier, Central New York, the Mohawk Valley, the Capital Region, Mid-Hudson, New York City, Long Island, and the North Country.

As you can see, there is no defined "upstate" New York region. However, it appears that the opinion on the topic differs based on where you grew up.

For instance, in a straw poll I conducted, people from Long Island or New York City seem to think "upstate" is either anything north of the city or anything from Westchester up. The argument for this seems to be "I don't know what else I would call it" or "I consider everything north of me to be upstate."

When you ask native northeastern New Yorkers, however, this is where the semantics really start to come into play. Some say upstate begins at Poughkeepsie, some say Greene County, and some say none of the above.

In an interview with Two Buttons Deep, Gov. Kathy Hochul said upstate begins "north of Westchester." This, however, seemed to be the least popular answer by a small percent among those polled when asked to choose between north of Poughkeepsie, north of Westchester, and anything north of the city.

Personally, I never put much thought into this until recently. I always thought it was generally accepted that anything north of, but not including Poughkeepsie, was upstate New York.

Turns out that couldn't be further from the truth. To my surprise, there are people at NEWS10 from the Capital Region who don't even consider Albany upstate.

The argument there seems to be this: Albany is in the middle of what people call the Hudson Valley and upstate, even though it is a part of the Capital Region which seems to be widely accepted as part of upstate. There is also the argument that upstate begins at the state's capital.

All in all, it's unclear what upstate actually is. Maybe we'll never know for sure.

What do you think? Send your opinions over to astanley@news10.com.