Is JD Vance's claim that Minneapolis residents are giving up on the city true?

by Pat Kessler

MINNEAPOLIS — Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance claimed in a visit earlier this week that Minneapolis is so overrun by crime that residents are fleeing the city.

He spoke in front of Minneapolis police's abandoned 3rd Precinct , which has still not been salvaged, four years after George Floyd rioters set it on fire and burned it down.

It's where Vance repeated a misleading narrative of a deteriorating city.

"A lot of people feel like it's easier to move out of Minneapolis than to build a life here," Vance said. "The story of Minneapolis is coming to every community across the United States of America if we promote Kamala Harris to President of the United States."

Vance's dark vision of the city, however, does not square with reality.

Minneapolis' population has actually grown since the 2020 pandemic and George Floyd's murder by more than 3,600 people. According to Met Council estimates , the population grew from 429,956 in 2020 to 433,633 in 2023.

The number of households is growing as well. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis reports that the number of people moving in and out of the city is largely unchanged since 2016.

Between 2016-2019, about 19% of people living in Minneapolis had moved to a suburb or out of the area by 2019. From 2020 to 2023, the number of people moving out was about 21%.

JD Vance claims that he never said Minneapolis is actually in decline, and that's technically true. But his walk-like-a-duck comments are false.

There are certainly challenges, but It's a myth that people are fleeing Minneapolis.