It’s the holiday season, and many Americans will get caught in the 24/7 marathon that is Hallmark Christmas movies. The premise of every movie is the same: small town girl comes home to save their family business and reunites with high school flame. In fact, last year, we fixed the storylines of many movies by providing demographic data so that the businesses wouldn’t be failing in the first place. But this year, in the spirit of giving, we wanted to help these movie lovers who might be looking for a Hallmark movie moment of their own. If you are looking for love this holiday season, and specifically want your own small town story, we have you covered.
For our purposes, we looked at cities with populations between 70,000 and 150,000, the ratio of males/females (age 20-39), and the percentage of the population in the target age group. You can look at and sort this data in many ways to determine which cities would make the top 5 list, but likely most important is simply how many single people live in the city. These are heavily weighted in college towns, as there is, of course, a high percentage of single adults in that town attending the local university.
Of course, now that you know what to look for, it is also important to find the cities to avoid. Based on population, there are 394 cities on our list. In total, 81 of the cities have a single population less than 30%, but none are as low as The Villages, Florida, where a mere 3.62% of the population are single adults between 20-39 years old. The bottom 5 cities for single adults are on the chart below.
If you want the true Hallmark movie moment, you need to look at cities with winter weather. For the picturesque love story at the holidays, you might consider a move to Boulder, CO (55.89% single), Provo, UT (49.72% single), Bridgeport, CT (47.33% single), Duluth, MN (45.18% single), or if you really love the cold, Fargo, ND (43.37% single) might be for you.