‘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]

No doubt about it, Beck had the bigger rally. Putting bodies in the street was the left’s strong point and they are slipping.

[potlatch]

They do it everywhere they gather. The streets after inauguration were a disgrace. They may even be doing it on purpose now that they know we dislike it.

Pigs!

[SES1066]

Thank you for these photos, especially the bottom tier one that prove that these guys are even stupider than I thought. Yesterday I posted to a different thread (#49) that I thought that these harangued and coerced attendees would be less than enthusiastic in cleaning up after themselves. Where I was wrong was that I thought that the organizers would make every effort to clean up quickly, having the previous conservative rallies reputation in mind. Now you show that they couldn't even do that much, what a bunch of leeches!

[catnipman]

“But honey, size doesn’t matter.” Uh, I’m trying remember where I’ve heard that before.

[ThunderSleeps]

‘One Nation’ Rally: Liberal Media Concludes Size Doesn’t Matter

Of course not. To the elitist socialist mindset, only a few elites matter. Some pigs are more equal than others.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Headline?

North America could have capsized, says Democrat Congressman
Too Many People On One Coast
Asks Mexico to dispatch entire population north to balance continent during rallies for Obama.

[potlatch]

[what a bunch of leeches! ]

I had not thought of what you wrote about the organizers perhaps making a bigger effort to clean up. They seem to be pigs, just leaving muck behind them everywhere they gather.

I wonder what their home environment looks like.........

[GOPJ]

Yep - the airplane’s a great distraction... /s

[dagogo redux]

Size DOES matter.

(Infantile weanie libs think if they score some “endowment” money from an NGO, that means they’re “endowed” . . . well, not quite. Sorry, kids. You have to grow up a bit before that will happen.)

[SeattleBruce]

Looks like we’re not the only ones disputing size!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101002/wl_nm/us_france_pensions_protests

“Unions said that about 2.9 million had marched, while police said the crowds numbered 899,000. The union figure was about the same as at the last demonstrations on September 23. The police figure was slightly lower.”

[MinuteGal]

Look for the union fable....tra la la.....

Leni

[Don W]

Y’all ever watch the TV show “Hoarders”?

[digger48]

They do it everywhere they gather. The streets after inauguration were a disgrace. They may even be doing it on purpose now that they know we dislike it.

Someone mentioned yesterday, that this is partly a union thing.

DC trash collectors are union, so their "brothers" can't and won't do another union members job.

That.....and liberals are pigs

[cyclotic]

Apparently a lot of people were in line for the bathroom when they took the photo.

[digger48]

I think most SEIU members take up more than 5 sq ft per head.

[potlatch]

I don't watch ‘regular’ TV, but am very familiar with what hoarders do. It's a kind of sickness that seems to become uncontrollable. Perhaps socialism falls into the same syndrome?

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

Obama did not stop by LOL read the comments after this article

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/02/a-weekend-away-for-the-first-couple/

The MSM in a online news search of ONE NATION RALLY PHOTOS is saying they had TENS of THOUSANDS. How many were truly there?

More pictures of they’re trash.

related thread

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2600577/posts

[Blind Eye Jones]

One question. Is this the first wave? Will they all be there for the Jon Stewart rally plus whatever the comedian and Obama can draw? Maybe they think it will be a one two knockout punch. I wouldn’t be surprised by such a devious followup plan right before the election.

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

The media says size does not matter now because they are socialist commiecrats and thug union bullies that say ONE NATION and omit we are UNDER GOD.

[potlatch]

[can’t and won’t do another union members job.]

That’s amazing! “Can’t and won’t do another’s job - I guess that fits in with expecting the government to do things for them.

They were bussed in, they didn’t make their own signs, they were given box lunches, I heard some were ordered to go and some were paid to go. Disgracefull people!