Beck vs. Stewart: What was the turn out?

11/1/2010 | Peter from Rutland

[Peter from Rutland]

I'm currently having an argument with someone about the turn out of the two rallies. They are of course saying that Stewarts rally had a bigger turn out than Beck's.

The basis of their argument is this:

─ http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/10/31/2010-10-31_jon_stewarts_rally_to_restore_sanity_drew_200000_beating_estimated_attendance_at.html

CBS News reports Stewart's event drew 215,000 people to the National Mall in Washington, based on a crowd estimate from AirPhotosLive.com.

The same company, which examines aerial photos of crowds to gauge attendance, estimated between 78,000 and 96,000 people attended Beck's rally in August.

This is obvious bogus. Anyone have any better stats?

[ridesthemiles]

You are comparing engaged citizens to a crowd going to see a comedy act.”

Saturday’s attendees didn’t even pay for their transportation.

Huffington provided a large number of busses for free transpostation.

Bek’s people came on their own nickle.

[Laserman]

ANybody seen photos of the trash from the Stewart rally? I assume it was like all the past Lefty rallies - a pig sty.

[mad_as_he$$]

Hum. Then accuracy is a real question. The angle alone would be steep at the edges and makes counting suspect.

[BenLurkin]

Better question: Why was the turnout?

[LoneStarGI]

Peter from Rutland, this whole ‘argument’ is a complete waste of both your and our time. This was always going to be spun. Beck’s rally was about restoring faith and was non-political. Stewart/Colbert’s rally was about publicity for their pathetic shows and was sponsored by far-left liberal organizations. Don’t lose sleep over this and don’t waste your time trying to argue with someone whose probably already made up their own mind. The biggest statement that can and will be made is with our votes tomorrow.

[momtothree]

“Just ask how much was raised for the Special Operations Warrior foundation...”

That about sums it up, doesn’t it? It’s all about Steward vs. Beck’s rally. Just a thought.

[TribalPrincess2U]

What did you say? The Stewart rally kept thousands of losers off the streets for a Saturday before election, and is generally conceded to have been a bomb.

Yep that was a good day.

[tips up]

As of Wednesday morning, it won’t really matter.

[Prokopton]

The liberals are smart enough to pay for a professional, albeit biased, estimate of crowd size. If the conservatives are too cheap to provide for their own professional estimate, even after years of getting beat over the head with biased liberal estimates, they should just keep quiet as they are too naive to engage in the discourse of political warfare.

[RonnG]

Do you really think a company like the one CBS hires makes its living by estimating DC crowds once every two or three years?

[Nip]

The only reason, well two actually, that Stewart's rally looked big were:

First, it was held at a much smaller location.
Second, those official photographers took pictures from locations and angles that increased the size of the crowd.

The one thing that i haven't seen yet is the clean up costs paid by we the tax payers for both rallies. Wonder what the cost per official attendee were.

[SomeCallMeTim]

Not many people harping on this anymore... but, I have a affinity for facts.

The DC Metro rider data is in..and, the count on the day of Stewart’s rally set an all-time Saturday record... more than 845,000 rider... That’s about 500,000 more than the same Saturday the previous year.

On the day of the Beck rally, the total was ~ 550,000... which was 250k or so more than the previous year.

This isn’t everything... as more locals might have been inclined to attend, vs people from outside DC at the Beck rally. But, clearly.. there were a crap-load of people at Stewart’ rally.

I’d guess... the two events were close to the same.