‘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.

[divine_moment_of_facts]

I was at the 'Restoring America One State at a Time' rally at Great Adventure on Saturday.. It was Amazing!!! Here is a pic I took of Glenn at the 'white board' when he first came on stage..

"Who Are We? Are We Done?"

[TribalPrincess2U]

Thanks for the photos. The enemy is IN OUR FACES now and we have no leadership to keep them away.

BTW...you have an interesting profile page.

I loved the Slim Whitman song. Brings back memories and right now
it’s really soothing to hear those type songs.

Think I’ll go to ITunes and download some country music of the past.

The old country music we have are on 78s and no way of playing them.

[SandRat]

Liberal Media Concludes Size Doesn’t Matter

Is that what they tell their wives/mistresses/girlfriends?

[TribalPrincess2U]

They gave people freebies, food and a day off work to play...and they still didn’t show up Beck...LOL

[potlatch]

I appreciate your comments and thanks about my ‘profile page’. Tons of music in there but you have to dig. It’s a maze, lol.

I lost a lot of hearing early in life so I cling to the ‘oldies’ that I remember well. Can’t understand the words in music now but it’s probably just as well!

[potlatch]

Lol, that's true! They should have had a massive crowd.

It's so alarming to see these communist so openly protesting in our country, don't think I've seen anything so blatant before.

[itssme]

Follow some of these pigs home and you'll understand why they think nothing of just littering their surroundings.

If they didn't have porta-potties at this rally, I know they would have just taken a dump, hopefully, behind a tree.

[itssme]

They got FREE TRANSPORTATION, FREE T-SHIRTS, FREE BOX LUNCHES, FREE SIGNS, and they cried WAAAWAAAWAAA all the way home.

[potlatch]

I agree and have mentioned it in other posts.

[itssme]

“The enemy is IN OUR FACES now and we have no leadership to keep them away.”

---

The enemy has always been around, communists, socialists, marxists, revolutionaries...and now they're showing their faces to the public, as is obama and his ilk in the White House. Consider this rally you saw as nothing more than a mug book, with the pictures and names of people and organizations, who are out to take down America and mold it into their desired likeness. These are the enemies, and we must work together to destroy them, beginning with November.

We had better work the hardest we ever have to get the vote out, inform people of who and what obama is, make sure those elderly and disabled have transportation to the polls, and most importantly, WE MUST PROTECT THE VOTE AFTER IT IS CAST. Sign up to be a poll watcher, and have a plan of action within your poll to safeguard the vote against SEIU/thug types who will have fast fingers and slight-of-hand tactics to apply to our votes...that's their job, and they DO work for obama. They will attempt to distract you and work behind your back. Be the watchdog for the votes.

Let's go to work and PROTECT OUR VOTE.

[Republic of Texas]

You know who says size doesn’t matter? People with small crowds, that’s who.

[GraceG]

Who are you?
Why are you here?
What do you want?

[Kenton]

It don’t mean nuthin’. We’ll see who has the numbers in November.

[divine_moment_of_facts]

I’m Toni and I’m a 10ther! ;)

[Art in Idaho]

I'm really trying to think what the libs/dems/socialist/communists/SEIU/NAACP/NEA expected to gain out of this rally. Anyone who watched it only came away with how pathetic it was and what a motley crew they portrayed. I don't get it. What was their payoff? They actually thought this would help?

It should only help conservatives on November 2nd!

November 2, Hurry Up!

[chessplayer]

DU`ers claiming 700,000 showed up at the rally.

[Arizona Carolyn]

I think it’s funny cSpan was caught using pics from Beck’s rally to play up this rally.

[Quix]

AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!

THX THX.

[M. Espinola]

The Leftist mass media promoted & lied about the numbers of their fellow travelers supporting Obamaism.

[Kaslin]

Ha