Estimates of the crowd in DC have ranged from a low of “thousands” by the lapdog MSM to more than two million by the UK daily Mail (seems high). Whatever the actual number turns out to be (we’ll probably never know), no doubt the turnout was higher than expected.
So here is the National Park Service schematic for estimating crowd size, released after Obama’s most expensive Inauguration in history (a hint of things to come, in retrospect):
And this is the link to the interactive version.
And here’s a pic of the crowd to compare it to:
UPDATE#2: The original pic the Beast found via Power Line (they’re usually pretty good) for this turned out not to be of the rally (thanks to Guru Steve), so here is a time lapse video that shows the crowd size.
here’s a statistical analysis done by Henry Vanderbilt:
Analysis 1: This gives a range of 240,000 to 320,000 marchers down Pennsylvania Ave, and is based on the time-lapse march route video plus measurements of the route taken from Google Maps. The time-lapse sequence was taken from a webcam over Freedom Plaza at 14th St and E NW, looking ESE down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol. The time-lapse video is 41 seconds long (0-40), is labelled as covering 8 AM to 1130 AM on 9/12/09, and thus scales at just over five minutes real-time per second of video. The video shows the march starting out of Freedom Plaza at 17 seconds (~9:30 AM) with the tail end leaving the plaza at 36 seconds.
UPDATE: and let’s talk cleanliness and respect for the environment. This is a shot of the aftermath of the 9/12 rally…
And this is after Obama’s inauguration…
Draw your own conclusions.
The Conservative Citizen 
Beast, the pic you posted above representing the 9-12 tea party is actually from the 1997 Promise Keepers gathering.
Yep, it was posted at Power Line last night and it is of another rally. They have retracted it. The beast will keep looking for a better pic.
I love the comparative trash pictures. Priceless!
It was a glorious day! The most awesome thing I’ve ever been a part of. We got to Freedom Plaza around 9:15 and began heading down Penn. Ave. around 10:40.
We made it all the way to the West lawn and settled down between some trees. Everyone was so well-behaved.
We started going back to the Metro station around 1:30, and there were fresh troops coming off the trains. There were even more people coming after we got back to our home base in Vienna, VA, so the total number had to have been well over 1 million; many more weren’t captured in that time lapse.
Here’s some video I took (sorry about the truly lousy audio– the mic distorts loud noises something awful)
And here we are, pre-march. (Mr. Mo K. took the pic. )
Hi – I’m the guy who got frustrated and ran those crowd estimates that were posted on Rand Simberg’s blog last night. I was deliberately conservative in my assumptions there. This morning, there’s firm data that the actual numbers were considerably larger.
My estimate of 240K-320K on the march itself was based on the assumption that the marchers averaged 6 to 8 square feet per person, and marched at 1 mph. Now, from http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/2009/09/912-march-it-wasnt-just-numbers.html, there’s actual direct data – someone had a people-meter at 11th St along the march route and counted 450,000 people passing during the main march. (Go with the higher crowd density and assume the actual march pace was closer to 1.4 mph, and voila, the simple model I used gives 450,000 marchers, matching the actual count on the route. There’s nothing like real-world data to refine an analytical model.)
Stacy McCain goes on to provide considerable additional information from onsite about transport backups slowing arrivals, people arriving via routes other than the march, and people arriving and leaving the whole time. Combined with the photos I’ve seen since of LOTS of protesters backed up across 3rd St and down the Mall, it starts to make an overall total in the high hundreds of thousands, possibly approaching a million, look very plausible.
Bottom line: Given the 450,000 people-meter number for the march itself, it was provably “hundreds of thousands” at the protest, almost certainly well over half a million, and possibly as high as a million overall. The media outlets minimizing the turnout as “tens of thousands” could stand to be firmly corrected. I’m sure there are people reading here who’d enjoy the exercise…
Henry Vanderbilt
Mo is awsome. I hope she didn’t “debase” D.C. too much for DFV.
Estimates of the crowd in DC have ranged from a low of “thousands” by the lapdog MSM
Let’s be a little bit more exact here:
I love the comparative trash pictures. Priceless!
Such as this?
(from here)
Phooey, why so desperate?
And, your photo of the trash comparison is laughable. At least the trash is in the general vicinity of the can, for Pete’s sake. Which would you rather have, if YOU had clean-up duty?
Thanks for your commentary, Mr. Vanderbilt. It’s pretty obvious that you are considered the most credible, as many bloggers have republished your original post.
The comparison between the rubbish left behind by a march of 60,000-75,000 people, and that left by the inaugeration of 2 million is laughable.
Keep denying, Phooey. You aren’t convincing anyone.
I guess it’s too much to ask that you read Vanderbilt’s analysis at the link Beast and I provided.
Typical.
Phooey, I think the pictures look like a few more than 70,000. I could really care less though. I’m just not sure why you do. Similarly I could care less if people were civil to each other. Just like at the inauguration, the MSM made a big deal about that but when there is no opposition present, it shouldn’t be surprising to find people that are agreeable.
But Mo is absolutely correct. Comparing overfilled trash cans with trash scattered around them is hardly the same as the pictures of the inauguration. And since Mo was actually there, I tend to think she would know if there were more people than attend a football game.
Keep denying, Phooey. You aren’t convincing anyone.
So where are the reports of strained infrastructure?
There were multiple people attending with “people counters”. We’ve had the one report already posted on another post and I saw another report that on just one side street alone it topped 150,000. It was the largest turn out probably ever for a left of center cause. Very impressive. Does it really matter, no. Is it far more than an average football game. Hell yes. I have spoken with several people who live in the D.C. area and to a person they said it was the largest demonstration they have ever seen.
There were multiple people attending with “people counters”. We’ve had the one report already posted on another post and I saw another report that on just one side street alone it topped 150,000. It was the largest turn out probably ever for a left of center cause.
Nope. How soon they forget…
As has been shown by the picture from 1997 that was used, reporting on this matter from the right is not to be trusted.
It’s a simple question – where are the reports of the strain on infrastructure?
Have you considered that many of those marching may not have been American?
God, Phoenician, you really should get out more. Or stop talking on occasion when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Speaking as a former member of the “Lord’s Army”, or at least I was taught the song and was a member of RA’s and a champion Bible driller… there is no plot to take over America or anywhere else. Half the kids who took those pledges were drinking and having sex, and most of the other half are some of the nicer people you’d ever meet.
There are plenty of bad seeds out there marching with those signs. But those sort of rabid fundamentalists are few and far between. Certainly not large enough for you to paint with so large a brush.
Well, I’m certainly glad you guys cleared that up for me. Just yesterday, I was sick with worry over how many showed up to a political pep rally and where they threw their trash.
But I’m still a bit confused. How again does this affect any of the laws being passed?
Um, you mean the laws not being passed, don’t you? Obamacare was supposed to be in the bag last August. CapNTax is withering on the vine. The Senate just voted to defund ACORN. Obama & Co’s bumbling have single handedly resurrected the political dead and energized the opposition to a degree unthinkable just six months ago. And when it comes to a protest rally size does mean something, which is why the msm was so desperate to lowball the turnout.
As for trash, unruly mobs don’t carry out their crap.
Um, you mean the laws not being passed, don’t you? Obamacare was supposed to be in the bag last August. CapNTax is withering on the vine. The Senate just voted to defund ACORN.
Uh-huh. Right.
You seemd to have missed the little recession you just went through, where Obama’s measures appear to have worked. I suspect that’s been taking up a little bit of time…
Obama & Co’s bumbling have single handedly resurrected the political dead and energized the opposition to a degree unthinkable just six months ago.
Or, alternatively, there’s a hell of a lot of screeching being whipped up by vested interests seeing if they can incite know-nothings.
Phooey, great link to the White House Briefing Room Presidential Actions page – Obama’s been a busy guy, achievement-wise. The Beast was particularly impressed by this wonder of rinkydinkery:
9/1/2009
Presidential Proclamations: National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month.
And it didn’t even cost a billion or so. Amazing! You libs must be so proud.
What’s with you Veatch? You should be happy that some people are actually starting to pay attention and get fired up. This must happen or conservatism, and your beloved GOP, are doomed.
Liberals are panicking or otherwise they wouldn’t be getting all quarrelsome about crowd numbers. It’s a sure sign that those who declared a “paradigm shift” are worried.
Resist them with all your might Phooey!
Liberals are panicking or otherwise they wouldn’t be getting all quarrelsome about crowd numbers. It’s a sure sign that those who declared a “paradigm shift” are worried.
When 60-75,000 people get inflated up to 2 million, there’s somebody panicking…
Again, where are the stories of strained infrastructure? There were plenty of them during the inauguration…
Seen on a comment thread elsewhere:
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I think we can come up with a reasonable standard of significance when it comes to your protest. Per Wikipedia (using census data):
671,678 people are employed in Washington, D.C., with only 28% commuting from within the city.
That means that 483,600 people commute into DC from outside the city every day for work. If your weekend protest cannot even come close to being within the same order of magnitude of the influx of people who commute into DC on an average weekday, then your protest didn’t have a lot of people.
For the record, I drove to downtown DC today from a bordering Maryland suburb. On a weekday, this would be insane: it would be rush hour and pretty much impossible to navigate your car through traffic. However, the roads were as relatively empty as you would expect them to be on a saturday morning.
When people claim “2 million” in DC, what they are saying is that there was a quadruple-sized rush hour into the city. You’re talking absolutely full metro cars and streets clogged with cars trying to get into downtown, and absolutely no street parking. Do people even think these things through when they make their claims?
Anyone who was here during the inauguration could tell you how the landscape of the city during that weekend had entirely changed to accommodate the shear number of people who had flooded into the city. By contrast, today there were just some people getting together on the mall to hold a march. Or, as it’s called here in DC, “Saturday.”
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And, just to rub the point in, on Saturday Sep 13 2008, there were 362,773 DC Metro riders. For Sept 12 2009, there were 437,624 riders.
Not everyone will be taking the DC Metro. But of those that do, most will be using it twice. And there was also the National Black Families event being held on the same day.
In contrast, on Inauguration Day, there were 1.12 million riders.
60,000 – 75,000 seems like the best estimate.
Add 300,000 for the 4700 buses that unloaded in DC that morning, add another 150,000 for the caravans and fly-ins, add the ones NOT shown on the West Lawn due to the Capitol Police closing down the entry points, and you will have 1 million+ people.
You libtards can’t accept the fact that ordinary working class Americans actually took the time to make a statement. We’re throwing your 60’s mentality right back in your face and all you can do is scream:
“racists and bigots and crackers Oh my!!!!”
Uh-huh. And the pictures or other proof of these 4700 buses, each carrying 64 people (man, they must have been packed to the brim)? And the evidence of traffic jams from caravans, or the airports being packed?
You libtards can’t accept the fact that ordinary working class Americans actually took the time to make a statement.
I can accept 60-75,000 wingnuts marching around to make themselves feel big, based on the estimates by news organisations on the spot and the evidence of transportation use.
No sane person would accept blowing it up to “a million+” when the evidence isn’t there.
If you believe that, you’d believe my penis is 5 and a half feet long.
How did none of you manage to get a crowd shot of this event?
UPDATE: When we drove back home from the Dunn Loring station after having a very late lunch at a nearby restaurant, we crossed over rt. 66 as always, and traffic heading out of the city was at a standstill. So, many people chose to drive in, esp. when they realized how long it was taking to just get a freaking Metro ticket.
That’s still just someone else’s opinion. I choose to believe the more scientific methods, although the ridership reports from WAMA are interesting.
Anything less than a few hundred thousand is still a ridiculous assertion.
I got on the orange line Metro in Virginia on the 2nd to last stop. A couple of the cars were already full-looking with standing room only, but we spotted a train with a few seats. Every stop, just when you think there was no more room, more people would cram on. I had people practically on my lap, and when the train would suddenly stop, no one was going anywhere when we were at capacity. We were jammed in like sardines. Some ppl could barely clear the door, and the recorded voice kept saying “Stand back, doors closing.” (Re the Black Family reunion, I saw only a few Blacks on our train, but granted, most live in MD so I can’t speak for the other lines.)
One of the fellows with us works in D.C. and said it was typical, and it’s even worse most days (I can’t imagine), which just made me vow never, ever to work in D.C. That’s insanity to do, every single day.
And might I remind you, once again, there were MORE PEOPLE coming in after we left, and those trains were packed, too. There is no way to really capture that, esp. since the traffic cam was apparently turned off in the early afternoon.
Additionally, many people went directly to the Capitol lawn to get a spot– they didn’t start from Freedom Plaza.
Oh, but I’m sure these are all just minor details to you.
There were busses and cars abandoned miles from their destination. The columns of thousands walking miles to their destination has been blogged and written about quite a bit.
I attended Dan’s bake sale in Ft. Collins a few years back. The media reported 100,000 attendees. There was probably that number at even given time and the more accurate number of total attendees during the entire day was probably closer to 250,000. And that was little more than a hastily put together ‘conservative fun day’ by Rush. I was there in the thick of it and the crowd there didn’t come close to what happened in what was probably one of the largest marches/protests in D.C. history. Phooey and the Left can huff and puff but anyone who was there or saw the videos or viewed the pics are not fooled by the panicky Left.
There were busses and cars abandoned miles from their destination. The columns of thousands walking miles to their destination has been blogged and written about quite a bit.
Uh-huh. All but forty or fifty thousand of a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people mostly over 50 spontaneously decided to take their cars, abandon them and walk miles to the event, while carrying banners and signs and confederate flags, without thinking of taking the subway, and hike out again backpacking their garbage with them, while the Washington Post, ABC, Fox, and the DC fire department all estimated them in the “tens of thousands” range as part of a liberal conspiracy?
I’ve been reading first hand accounts and interacting with some of those who attended. What have you been doing? You’d make an extremly poor journalist or detective.
Well, no wonder you’re getting a biased account! Lord, let’s all call Tim Geithner and get an objective analysis of how the economy is doing!
I’ve been reading first hand accounts and interacting with some of those who attended. What have you been doing?
Noting reports of the objective evidence, such as metro use.
So, how did using that picture from 1997 work out for Malkin?
I continue to be amazed that any of you is wasting his time trying to prove whose number is closer to the truth. It couldn’t be any less relevant!
Beast and Dave are wrong in their assumptions that rallies like these boost the GOP or put the brakes on Obama’s agenda. The reason why Obama’s plans have slowed is because among the general population of America, a growing number opposes his plans, and on some key issues like health care, a majority is now against him. THAT’s what causes Congress to scream “Halt.” They don’t care a whit how many people scribble silly sayings on signs and run around the mall. They have highly paid professional pollsters who are giving them very specific numbers about what the voters in their district believe.
The rallies aren’t a sign that people are “finally waking up.” Nearly every attendee voted for McCain and has hated Obama since Day 1. Sure, it’s a sign that the Right is more fired up, a not insignificant datum, but the rallies are a result of the right-wing passion, not any kind of cause of it.
A fired up base can only help a political party. DFV should know better. It certainly affects voter turnout. And if numbers at a protest like this didn’t matter, the nutroots wouldn’t be up in arms about numbers either. Last week shook them up more than they’d like to admit. They’ve declared a paradigm shift and the culture wars over because of Obama’s election. Now they know that’s wrong. Their secular messiah can bleed and many of the American people are standing up and saying “hell no” to his radical agenda. Interesting sociological event and reaction to observe and analyze.
Setting the record straight, my diabolical “misinformation campaign“.
How do rumors get started?
And if numbers at a protest like this didn’t matter, the nutroots wouldn’t be up in arms about numbers either.
Dude, laughing at people who manage to inflate a crowd of 60-75,000 up to 2 million is not “being up in arms”; it’s laughing at you.
Maybe next time you can spare a few hundred dollars to get an aerial photo…
Culture wars?! Dave, I beg you to turn this into a culture wars thing. Did it ever occur to you that many of the people on your side in the polls rejoined you because it suddenly meant they didn’t have to think about focusing on abortion, censorship and homosexuals?
Meanwhile, something else bugs me. Quite a few of the people worried about socialism are poor former Soviets or people from other communist countries who don’t seem to know any better. I can’t imagine how worried they must be, and it really chafes me that nobody is telling them that in America, we would never allow a dictator to take power. The military would never listen to one, the police would never work for one, and the people would never subjugate themselves to one.
I’m think I’m done pandering to Phooeys posts. Ugh. What a pain. And Wes, those who have lived under tyranny and socialism make great defenders of feedom. They know what the alternative can be. And the GOP welcomes those who value liberty and justice.
Well, I’m glad they’re such useful tools for your cause.
Wes, do you really believe they’re all stupid? What if I said the blacks make such useful tools for the Democrats? Why can’t it be the fact that they have experience in countries where the government runs major aspects of the economy, and they know they don’t wnat that to happen here? Do you really think that every or even most eastern Europeans think socialism is the same as communism?
When I read your comment, the name that leaps to mind is Roland Burris. I have nothing but disdain for Democrats that use the deep-seated fear of racism as a first resort.
There are some immigrants who understand what is being discussed. But, of course, what is being discussed is not socialized healthcare or single-payer national health insurance. That argument has already been won.
I’m talking about people who think that Obama plans to use the government to completely take over an American business. Because they’ve been in a place where these sorts of things were possible, they now fear that it could happen here as well. No, I don’t think they understand the character of the American people one bit. Nobody who saw totalitarianism firsthand and believes such things could happen in the USA can possibly understand it.
Conservatives are notoriously clean protesters, marchers and gatherers. At Dan’s Bake sale you had well over 100,000 milling around at any time during the day and it was downright pristine. The best “bad” picture the Coloradoan could find and print to malign the Rush gathering was a trampled plant. That’s it, really. Our liberal friends on the other hand…
In college we used to laugh about Earth “trash city park” Day. It took a small army of city workers to clean up after the “I love the earth” people.
Conservatives are notoriously clean protesters, marchers and gatherers.
Conservatives SAY this, just as they say American healthcare is no.1 or that America doesn’t torture…
By the way – here’s the story of how the vastly inflated figures started. It shows the credibility of the fringe right quite nicely.
I could cut Phoenician some slack, since he posted the link about the 2 million number several hours ago. But that would ignore the fact that Guru posted a link showing a different perspective some six hours prior. In my opinion, the story Phoenician posted doesn’t undercut the credibility of the fringe right as much as it does the fringe left. Because it keeps talking about the “lie” and conservative bloggers “spreading” that lie. But anyone who reads Steve’s link can see that it was not a lie, but an error, which was corrected by every right-wing site that ran with it. Obviously it was lousy journalism, but seriously, asking bloggers to get two solid sources for stories is silly. Even news networks don’t do it anymore.
In my opinion, the story Phoenician posted doesn’t undercut the credibility of the fringe right as much as it does the fringe left. Because it keeps talking about the “lie” and conservative bloggers “spreading” that lie. But anyone who reads Steve’s link can see that it was not a lie, but an error, which was corrected by every right-wing site that ran with it.
So you’re now no longer objecting to the 60-75,000 estimate, but instead whining that it was merely an “error” rather than a deliberate lie by Matt Kibbe?
Objecting to the number and labeling it are two different things. If, as you seem to believe, this is a conspiracy among the dark forces of the right-wing blogosphere, their widespread acknowledgement of their own error would seem to be a poor strategy.
Useful analysis here.
But note the killer bit – on Sep 12 2009, there were 437,624 Metro riders. Of Saturdays in September, there were two outliers from the 300-350,000 average – one less, attributed to a hurricane, and one higher.
On Sep 24 2005 there were 464,398 riders, 30,000 more than on the day of this teabagger march. The reason for this was an anti-war march – estimated at 100,000-150,000.
And on Sep 12 2009, you also had the National Black Family event…
DFV – follow the link above. The false estimate can be tied down to a specific person and time – Matt Kibbe of Freedomworks, on that Saturday, lying about a fictitious ABC report.
god, you guys are a bunch of disgusting slobs. Take a look around after a tea party….CLEAN