‘One Nation’ Rally: Liberal Media Concludes Size Doesn’t Matter (Beck Rally Crowd Much Bigger!)

Pajamas Media ^ | October 3, 2010 | Charlie Martin

[Kaslin]

Another exclusive Pajamas Media crowd estimate.

The widely publicized, heavily subsidized “One Nation” rally was Saturday in Washington, D.C. As has been openly admitted by the organizers, which included the AFL-CIO, the SEIU and Obama’s perpetual campaign organization Organizing for America, this rally was held in the same place and at basically the same time of the day as Glenn Beck’s 8/28 “Restoring Honor” rally, specifically to demonstrate the depth of support for the president’s program. The convention organizers had a number of advantages, perhaps the greatest being that the buses bringing in demonstrators were apparently subsidized by the rally organizers.

Some of the initial reports were very positive: the organizers estimated 175,000 to 200,000 attendees, according to Crooks and Liars‘ report of “preliminary satellite estimates … at about noon EST [sic].”

(Where do they get these satellite estimates? PJM has been completely unsuccessful finding satellite companies that can give us these sorts of pictures on demand; there isn’t a satellite passing over Washington, D.C., any time you want one.)

Comments from Left Field notes this “more than doubles the 87,000 attendees of Glenn Beck’s Restoring the Honor Rally,” using the CBS News estimate I discussed at length here in August (“You Can See November from the Washington Monument”).

Naturally, we were interested in the topic. Following various crowd estimates has become a running topic of interest at Pajamas Media, starting with my original crowd estimates that began with a “back of the envelope” calculation in a comment at Vodkapundit, followed by a more formal calculation here in PJM (“March on Washington: How Big Was the Crowd?“).

Since then, I’ve built up a fairly well described methodology: we use Google Earth to estimate the area of the crowd from whatever photographs are available, then multiple by several different constants depending on the crowd density. These estimates are taken from published Park Service standards going back at least to the Obama inaugural.

Since the “One Nation” rally was consciously positioned at exactly the same place as the “Restoring Honor” rally, we can compare with my original baseline very easily.

Here’s the crowd perimeter as I drew it with Google Earth:

That area was about 2.4 million square meters. Using the crowd density estimates, we finally arrived at these estimates for the Beck crowd:

Estimate	10 square feet per person	5 square feet per person	2.5 square feet per person
Maximum:	215,000 people		430,000	860,000
90 percent	200,000	400,000	800,000
75 percent		163,000	326,000	652,000
50 percent	108,000	216,000	432,000
CBS News Estimate	87,000	87,000	87,000
40 percent	86,000	172,000		344,000

The assumptions there correspond to the Park Service’s standard for a “dense crowd” of about 5 square feet per person, my estimate of the crowd densities observed in the photos (10 square feet per person), and estimates from people in the most densely packed parts of the crowd (2.5 square feet per person).

All things considered, I think the best estimate, finally, is that Beck attracted somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 people.

The Associated Press summed it up this way:

Organizers claimed they had as many participants as Beck’s rally. But Saturday’s crowds were less dense and didn’t reach as far to the edges as they did during Beck’s rally.

This is illustrated in these comparative photographs:

Click here for a photo from Saturday’s left-wing rally.

Click here for a photo from the Glenn Beck rally.

Compare and contrast as necessary — as the lawyers say: “the thing speaks for itself.”

It’s difficult to place the edges of the crowd from these photographs, simply because the crowd in that one overhead photo is so far down the picture. However, the grassy area around the Lincoln Memorial is roughly one tenth the area in the full map above. That means the “One Nation” crowd would have been roughly 22,000 to 85,000 people at most.

[Anti-Bubba182]

"Where do they get these satellite estimates?"

‘One Nation Working Together’ Rally Claims Bigger Numbers Than ‘Restoring Honor’

There is video at the link. It is a lie by the way. There is no Satellite image. It would be on the wires if it existed, especially if it showed what the speaker claimed that this rally was bigger than Beck's.

For a real image go here:

Let’s Compare Aerial Pictures of the 10/2 & 8/28 Rallies

[DesertRhino]

The mainstream media,, says “size doesn’t matter”

Snicker,, nothing more to add.

[Brilliant]

Size doesn’t matter to a liberal, because they control the dead vote.

[rdb3]

Res ipsa loquitur.

Runaway Slave

Apostle Claver tells the world how the real party of racism is the Democrats

[Anti-Bubba182]

They better dig up some more from the look of those pictures.

[Matchett-PI]

"One half sky? Selective cropping not showing the empty spaces? Oh, I see now. He wanted to get the airliner in the pic."
66 posted on Sunday, October 03, 2010 10:22:01 AM by Walmartian

[ridesthemiles]

They had to pay for busses to bring them in & they still couldn’t get anywhere near the crown that paid it’s OWN WAY to Beck’s rally.

[ridesthemiles]

They had to pay for busses to bring them in & they still couldn’t get anywhere near the crowd that paid it’s OWN WAY to Beck’s rally.

[4rcane]

liberals are generally ALOT better at doing rallies. I remember I used to hear millions man march articles all the time. The fact that they couldn’t even get above 100k, speaks volumes

[Marty62]

Testiment to the failure of the Unions and Commie/fascist thugs.

Bet Zero is even more depressed.

[potlatch]

[mainepatsfan]

As I recall the best shot from Glenn’s rally was taken from the top of the Washington Monument. For some reason I haven’t seen one taken from that same vantage point. Can’t imagine why. /s

[Rocko]

So much for the environmentalists taking care of the environment.

[Anti-Bubba182]

They have claimed they are more numerous, but their support is a mile wide and an inch deep. Things are bad and Democrat party identification is down. There is only so much Union astroturf available.

[hattend]

BTTT

[Leo Carpathian]

The engineering eye would conclude from the pictures that commie rally had about 10% of the Beck's rally.

There were statements that if the pool was filled with people, that would be 250,000. Looking at Becks rally, that is at least 3 times area filled with people and I would estimate somewhere between 800,000 to 1,000,000.

Notice also that RAT rally allowed buses to park next to the area, while Becks space was filled with porta toilets.

Now stand by for the “wisdom” spewed at the RATrally.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Go here:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/lets-compare-aerial-pictures-of-the-102-828-rallies/

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

BIG difference in crowd density.

The only thing dense in the leftie rally is their heads.

[melsec]

Looks like they had 32 people, a dog and a monkey - all of them had fleas so they might be counting them as well!

Mel