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Glenn Beck "Restoring Honor" Rally Crowd Estimate Explained (CBS Defends 87,000 Estimate)
CBS News Political Hotsheet Blog ^ | August 31, 2010 | Brian Montopoli

Posted on 09/01/2010 10:30:52 AM PDT by Yo-Yo

As part of our coverage of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally Saturday, CBS News commissioned the company AirPhotosLive.com to offer an independent estimate of how many people showed up for the event. AirPhotosLive.com calculated that there were approximately 87,000 people there, plus or minus 9,000 people. It was the only scientific estimate made of the number of people at the rally.

The estimate generated criticism from conservative bloggers as well as from Beck himself, who suggested the rally attracted at least 500,000 people.

"The media can diminish the crowd side all they want, but the images speak for themselves," Beck said on his Fox News show Monday.

In order to bring more clarity to the crowd estimation process, Hotsheet asked Curt Westergard, the president of AirPhotosLive.com, to discuss his methods. Westergard's company has done aerial imaging for the U.S. border patrol, the Department of Homeland Security, companies building skyscrapers and cell phone companies trying to decide where to build their towers, among others.

"People hire us to get a really detailed view of what's on the ground," he said.

The company sometimes uses these images for crowd estimates, both generating its own estimates and partnering with Professor Stephen Doig of Arizona State University, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and crowd estimate expert, to come up with figures. For President Obama's inauguration last year, the company worked with Doig and GeoEye satellite data to generate a crowd estimate on behalf of CNN that was cited by the Associated Press and other news outlets.

To calculate attendance at the Beck rally, AirPhotosLive.com used what is called a surveillance aerostat balloon to take pictures from both above the event and closer to the ground. In the video above, which was provided by the company, you can see some of the images used to come up with a figure.

The balloon, Westergard said, gave the company the capacity to move up and down, allowing it to photograph people who were standing beneath trees in addition to taking photos from high above.


Credit: AirPhotosLive.com)

Doig estimated that there were 80,000 people at the "Restoring Honor" rally, while AirPhotosLive.com estimated that there were 87,000 people, a statistically insignificant different since the margin of error was 9,000. CBS News elected to use the higher estimate.

In a blog post, Doig, writing from Portugal, noted that he estimated the crowd at Mr. Obama's inauguration at roughly 800,000 - a number critics assailed as too low.

"Crowd counting, particularly of political events, always is controversial," he wrote. "The organizers of the event inevitably hype their crowd estimate -- often grossly -- to demonstrate the popularity of their cause, and opponents inevitably underestimate to fit their own agenda. Because of the wild pre-inauguration predictions of how many would attend in person -- up to 5 million! -- my reality-based estimate was ignored by many left-wing commentators and embraced by those on the right."

He added: "The frothing underscores the problem with hyped predictions of crowd size. Organizers and supporters are forced to insist loudly that the actual crowd met or exceeded their expectations, for fear that the realistic estimate will be painted as a disappointment. The time-honored way to dismiss scientific estimates that don't reflect the pre-event hype is to claim political bias on the part of those doing the estimate. I am amused to see that those who embraced my Obama inauguration estimate as soberly realistic are now attacking the Beck rally estimate, produced using exactly the same methods, as deliberately biased."

On his Fox News show, Beck used an Associated Press photo taken from the Washington Monument to support his claim that there were at least 500,000 people at the event. He said that, looking at the photo, it was obvious that a nearly mile-long area was nearly completely filled with people, evidence that the CBS News-commissioned estimate was far too low.

But Westergard said it's a mistake to try to count crowds that way, and noted, as you can see in the video above, that people bunched in front of jumbo-trons and did not tightly fill out the entire area.

"You really have to have a position overhead to count it well, and if you use a very oblique angle from the top of the Washington Monument, the sparse areas - and there were many because of people with blankets and chairs - tend to look more dense because you're looking at it from the edge," he said. "We instead are looking at it from above. And that perspective is essential. Anything less than that is sort of like guessing how many people are in a line by just looking at them through a doorway, for example."

Westergard, who said he has received hundreds of hate mails and angry phone calls over the estimate of the Beck rally, also pointed to this link showing roughly 400 photos the company took at the rally, arranged spatially. Many of these photos were used in generating the two estimates.

Check out two pictures of the Glenn Beck rally below:


Credit: AirPhotosLive.com)


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism
KEYWORDS: beck; honor; restoring
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To: Yo-Yo
(CBS Defends 87,000 Estimate)

The COMMUNIST broadcasting system is full of sh!t...they are a disgrace to their trade. No wonder why they are going broke. Sink you ba$tards!!

21 posted on 09/01/2010 10:54:24 AM PDT by GoldenPup
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To: zzeeman

There is the answer to the innaccurate count.


22 posted on 09/01/2010 10:55:36 AM PDT by Marty62 (marty60)
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To: Yo-Yo

That first photo doesn’t bear any resemblance to pictures we have seen online. The Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool aren’t even in that picture. This looks like a picture taken of an empty field somewhere - does anyone see any recognizable landmarks here? I sure don’t.


23 posted on 09/01/2010 10:59:26 AM PDT by Thank You Rush
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To: The Great RJ
That estimate of 87,000 was likely close for the photo shown, but where ever and when ever that photo was taken it it was not the crowd seen in the other pictures.

Due to an error on my part a few paragraphs were left out of the cut and paste process, which are in post #12.

This sentence should have immediately preceed the first image, and it brings that image into context:

Westergard provided the image below to help show how the estimates are made. It's of a Tea Party Express event on April 15th that the company calculated attracted 4,436 people.


(Credit: AirPhotosLive.com)


24 posted on 09/01/2010 11:02:02 AM PDT by Yo-Yo (Is the /sarc tag really necessary?)
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To: Yo-Yo

We just looked at the Google Satellite view. The picture they show is a little piece of the Mall North East of the Washington Monument. Look for the triangular walkway and the stand of trees.

They weren’t even fracking looking at the Lincoln Memorial!

Their pic shows something like a bandstand or stage with the crowd gathered around. It wasn’t even taken the same day! I’ve never seen such an outrageous lie in the media.


25 posted on 09/01/2010 11:06:17 AM PDT by FrogMom (No such thing as an honest democrat!)
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To: Yo-Yo

The problem with taking big pictures of the entire area and using them to say the crowd was huge is that there are a lot of people on the mall every saturday.

How do you know that the people standing several blocks from the main event, over by the trees on the left and right of the reflecting pool, are there for the actual event?

Of course, a lot of people might well stand in the shade, but wouldn’t you still expect the entire area around the stage to get filled up with people?

Estimating crowds, and determining who was there for what, is really beyond the capability of a few photographs. You need a more pro-active counting mechanism.

For example, set up a phone counter like american idol that includes caller id exclusion, and tell the crowd to call at several times during the event. Everybody with a phone calls in at least once, and you get a count of everybody who has a cell phone at least.

Then you ask those without cell phones to raise their hands, and you take a picture. Later, you can estimate the percentage who raised their hands, and use it to adjust your numbers.

But mostly, people don’t want an actual count of people at an event. They want to be able to say “500,000”, or “1,000,000”, without regard to the actual numbers.


26 posted on 09/01/2010 11:19:11 AM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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To: Yo-Yo

I tried to look at the additional photos. They are being hosted at a Microsoft Photo site. Only Microsoft could manage to have a simple photo site that is impossible for users to access because of “older versions” of software. They are stupid jpegs, any program can view them, but the site is tied to MS Silverlight, which apparently being a Microsoft product is incompatable with itself, requiring the “latest version” to accomplish a simple task.

Since I don’t have administrative access to put new crappy MS products on my computer, I can’t look at simple pictures? This is why I hate Microsoft. They must work hard at making sure you have to keep getting their latest software.


27 posted on 09/01/2010 11:24:07 AM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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To: CharlesWayneCT
I tried to look at the additional photos. They are being hosted at a Microsoft Photo site. Only Microsoft could manage to have a simple photo site that is impossible for users to access because of “older versions” of software.

I guess I have a new enough version of Silverlight on my computer, so I didn't know about it being needed.

Too bad you can't see it, because it is a very neat scrollable composite of several images overlaid on each other to make up a mosaic of the Mall that you can pan, tilt, and zoom through.

There is also a moasic slide show you can run. Still looks like a helluva lot more than 87,000 to me. I see crowds of 87,000 on campus during football Saturdays, and there's lots more people on that mall than at the stadium.

28 posted on 09/01/2010 11:35:04 AM PDT by Yo-Yo (Is the /sarc tag really necessary?)
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To: Hojczyk

*What is CBS???*

Stands for “See B.S.”


29 posted on 09/01/2010 12:09:43 PM PDT by PATRIOT1876 (Language, Borders, Culture, Full employment for those here legally)
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