Posted on 08/29/2010 9:52:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
How many people showed up for Saturday's "Restoring Honor" rally? If you listen to the legacy media, you'll never know. (Related: Don't miss Ed Driscoll on "Subliminal Reduction at the Washington Post.")
How many people attended Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday?
There is a puzzling disparity among the estimates offered: USA Today and ABC News headline it merely “thousands” (but USA Today uses “tens of thousands” in the text, while ABC says “more than 100,000″), and the AP offers us “tens of thousands.” The New York Times offers us just “enormous,” while Politico takes the easy way out and simply says “no one can say for sure.” The National Park Service has returned to insisting that they don’t make crowd size estimates, which is true, except on those occasions when they do.
So, once again, let’s see if we can make a reasonable estimate for ourselves. Unlike some of our previous attempts, there seems to be a good supply of photographs.
First, one sent to Glenn Reynolds by Ed Frank, taken from the top of the Washington Monument. According to Ed, this was taken at about 11 am, while people were still arriving:
Second, the AP’s own photograph:
Another AP photograph shows more of the area between the Washington Monument and the end of the reflecting pool:
Clearly, it’s a big crowd.
First, look carefully at the crowd, and for context, have a look at this Google Map of the area.
You can see the Memorial on the left, the Washington Monument on the right, and of course these photographs are looking to the west; the reflecting pool is in the middle, and north is to the right.
Zoom in on the north side: we can see the crowd is under the trees, and pretty dense at the adjacent road; it is really up to the Constitution Gardens pond:
On the south, again, the crowd goes pretty well up to the trees:
Since the last time we made an estimate, my own technology has improved. Using Google Earth, I constructed a polygon that covers the apparent area of the crowd, and another that takes in just the reflecting pool (since there are not a lot of people standing in the water).
With the aid of an excellent online tool, we find the enclosing area is about 223,000 square meters and the reflecting pool about 26,000 square meters. By applying only the least bit of advanced math, we get a total area for the crowd of about 197,000 square meters. The Park Service considers a “dense crowd” to be around 10 square feet per person, or about 0.93 square meters per person — call it 1.1 people per square meter. If the whole area were packed that densely, we’d have about 215,000 people.
Of course, it’s clear from these pictures that the whole area isn’t that tightly packed; on the other hand, we don’t know when the photos were taken. So let’s make a range of estimates.
| Maximum: | 215,000 people | |
| 90 percent | 200,000 | |
| 75 percent |
|
163,000 |
| 50 percent | 108,000 | |
| CBS News Estimate | 87,000 | |
| 40 percent |
|
86,000 |
These are relatively small estimates compared to some, so let’s just note that I’m taking a very conservative approach:
So these should be considered very conservative estimates, especially as we think about the lower percentages. The total could easily be, say, twice the 75 percent estimate, or about 330,000 people..
Now, as I was completing this piece, CBS News released its own estimate, based, it said, on an estimate they commissioned by AirPhotosLive.com. That estimate: 87,000 ± 9,000. (Oddly, AirPhotosLive.com doesn’t list crowd estimation or anything that seems much similar in its services, but perhaps that’s just an oversight.)
It appears to me that 87,000 is a real lower bound estimate: that would mean that only about 40 percent of the area had a “dense” crowd. And there weren’t any people in the other areas I didn’t include.
As always, you the reader will have to draw your own conclusions.
Looks more like at least 500,000 people showed up.
How big was the crowd???
we will find out November 2nd.
My wife and I were under the trees in the area between the Vietnam “Wall” and the Tidal Pool, and that area was packed with people.
Just a few hundred agitated right-wingers.
/media bias
And for every person who was there yesterday, there were many who couldn’t attend in person but were there in spirit.
I was not able to attend, but I attended in spirit.
we will find out November 2nd.Yours is the best answer. What is more infuriating than the crowd count is the slew of commentary "delegitimizing" the participants.
What’s the big deal about all the counting—who cares? It was what it was. Come November—that’s when the important count will be held.
How many were there? Half as many as would have attended had Olberman and Ed Schultz been the headliners.
I think so too
The guy that runs Aerphotos is a leftist hack. He lists his twitter favorites as Michael Moore, Al Gore, Ariana Huffington and Andrew Ross Sorkin. /rolleyes
We will need more than enough to cover the fraud perpetuated by the likes of ACORN and SEIU thugs.
I will offer this wisdom. I live in Arlington and use the METRO system daily. At 0745, I tried to enter the blue line from the Pentagon to DC....to attend the rally. The 10-car train pulls in and it’s crammed full. Whatever I’ve experienced at rush-hour during the week...it’s 30 percent more than that.
Somehow, the folks push enough, and I actually get onboard. I counted....there were around 300 folks in that car. You could not move and barely could breathe. So the train was hauling 3,000 folks in my humble opinion. The very next stop was the Cemetery, and about half the folks got off. This exit took three minutes, which was very untypical for the METRO to stand till that long. We all proceeded out and it took a good twenty minutes to get out of the station and up on the road to walk out. In front of me....at least 4k folks walking (0800).
I got to the Memorial and by 0900 had circled the entire pool. I would say at that point...100k folks where there. There were at least 10k folks arriving every ten minutes by bus or just walking in from the METRO from that point on.
By 1000, standing out by the WW II site....and to the rear of the Washington Memorial....I’d say 10k folks were seated there, and easily 250k around the pool.
The funny thing is that you could see this line of folks still walking in from the Smithsonian METRO station (figure at least 5k from the top of the hill down).
I started leaving around 1200...heading toward the Smithsonian, and met another 10,000 folks still walking in. At the METRO station....trains were still pulling in with full cars (the late folks).
Bottom line? METRO was overwhelmed. If these CBS folks want to claim 85k there...fine...then that totally overwhelmed the METRO system. Frankly, I don’t buy that and if you ask METRO folks to admit how many tickets they sold that day....that might be a more realistic figure to use in estimates. My humble guess is that it came between 250k and 300k total for the day at the rally.
There’s alway the possibility of a rigged election—we all know that. We need to have more of us at every polling place, watching very closely.
However, hope springs eternal, and maybe because there has been so much publicity about the last election, people will be more vigilant this go around.
Basically, event organizers should have ordered commercial satellite photos as that will provide the most reliable estimate.
If it was a liberal event, CBS would tell us the crowd was 7 trillion. It would seem that way with all the media members covering it.
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