An Impression Of The Protest
…from Matt Welch, who wandered out to the mall to see it..
[Late evening update]
Per the discussion in comments, a graphical tale of “left” versus “right” events on the mall.
[Late Sunday night update, with a bump]
Henry Vanderbilt (who should start a blog on space transportation and other topics) sends an analysis of the crowd size via email. He says it’s clearly six figures — hundreds of thousands:
I’ve taken a look at the available hard data on the crowd size at yesterday’s DC Tea Party, and (FWIW), by two different crowd-count methods based on two different data sources (one of these including the New York Times report). It’s definitely “hundreds of thousands.” Not “millions”, no, nor mere “tens of thousands” as all the major media outlets are putting it. Hundreds of thousands. Two analyses follow in detail, to allow criticism of the methodology and addition of better data.
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 (~11:10 AM). Google Maps sat view, meanwhile, shows Pennsylvania Ave. to be just over 220 feet wide (eight traffic lanes plus sidewalks) along the march route, and the length of the march route from the exit of Freedom Square to where the road reaches the Capitol West Lawn to be just over 4400 feet. The video seems to indicate marchers filled both road and sidewalks for the entire march route for most of the time of the march, FWIW.
The video does not seem to provide enough resolution, spatial or time, to directly measure the rate of advance of the march. The speed with which the route initially fills up shouldn’t be used (the fast ones always end up out front) nor the speed with which it empties (the slow ones are at the back). I’ll make the assumption here that the march averaged 1 mph – large dense peaceable crowds tend to have much internal friction and move slowly, 1-2 mph in my experience; I think 1 mph is mildly conservative.
So we know the crowd took ~100 minutes to march past the east end of Freedom Square on a route ~220 feet wide, and we’re assuming they averaged a 1 mph rate of advance. That would make the entire crowd about 8800 feet long by 220 feet wide (had the route of march actually been that long). In other words, the crowd occupied about 1.94 million square feet at their march density, at an assumed march speed of 1 mph.
We now need a second assumption: how tightly packed the crowd was as they marched.
I estimate that a really tightly jammed crowd (stage-front at a concert) takes about two square feet per person. A dense elbow-to-elbow crowd on the move is three to four square feet per person, and a polite relaxed crowd on the move is six or more square feet per person. This marching crowd seemed very densely packed in the overhead video, but from various closeups I’ve seen it seemed more like 6-8 square feet per person. 1.94 million square feet divided by six square feet per marcher gives about 320,000 marchers; divided by 8 gives about 240,000 marchers.
To sum up, the width of the march route and the time for the march to pass one point are known. The two main assumptions in this crowd estimate are the average speed of the march and the average spacing of the marchers. 1 mph and 6-8 square feet per person seem mildly conservative estimates; based on those we get a crowd size of multiple hundreds of thousands.
Note too that this march-route estimate does not cover anyone who arrived at the march destination by other routes.
Analysis 2: This one gives a range of 330,000 to 500,000 demonstrators in front of the Capitol, and is based on the NYT description of the crowd (“A sea of protesters filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall) plus the first photo in the story at the Daily Mail, showing the Capitol West Lawn during the protest, plus measurements taken from Google Maps sat view of the area.
The overall West Lawn of the Capitol area is a square just over 1500 feet on a side. Between the Reflecting Pool, the Botanic Gardens building, and various other obstructions, I estimate about 75% of that area is actually available for a crowd. That’s comes out to about 1.7m square feet.
The National Mall, meanwhile, consists of eight squares of about 600 by 600 feet each, (about 360,000 square feet each) in a line west to the Washington Monument. I will assume for this analysis that the crowd described by the NYT extended only to the first of these eight blocks, giving us 1.7m + 360K square feet, or about 2 million square feet of crowd.
Crowds at rest take less room than crowds on the move; I therefore assume a range of 4 to 6 square feet per person in this crowd. The above-pointered picture in the Daily Mail seems to support the 4 square feet end of this range, but it was taken from just east of the Reflecting Pond and shows the front portion of the crowd – the crowd density likely drops further back. However, there is also uncertainty about just how far back the crowd goes – at least one attendee claimed in a blog comment that the crowd described by the NYT extended the entire length of the Mall. Applying the 4 to 6 square foot range to the West Lawn plus first block of Mall area seems reasonable for now, absent better data. This gives us an estimated 330,000 to 500,000 demonstrators in front of the Capitol yesterday.
Obviously there are significant error bands in both of these estimates. There’s also room for better data; in particular I’d be interested in any marchers who accurately timed their march from leaving Freedom Square to first arriving at 3rd St where the West Lawn starts, as well as any more info on how far back along the Mall the crowd extended and how dense the crowd was.
I think it’s already very clear, however, that “hundreds of thousands” is the correct description of the size of the 9/12/09 DC protest.
I wasn’t there, but the pictures I’ve seen look like a lot of people. This is the kind of analysis that it would be nice to get from journalists, but most of them went into the profession because (among other reasons) they were told there would be no math.
[Bumped]
[Monday updates]
Bruce Webster has thoughts and pictures. And the Gormogons have turned the analysis up to eleven. They think there are on the order of a million people.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Another analysis over at Pajamas Media. Again, on the order of a million.
[Update on Thursday morning, the 17th]
Pajamas has a new post on the subject.
September 13th, 2009 at 8:56 am
This got cycled down, attendance wise, just the 300,000, became a Million Man March.
The first reports on local news said TENS of thousands, later that became, just, thousands. Sounds like typical MSM reporting to me. Instead of reporting the news, they made it.(up.)
September 13th, 2009 at 10:14 am
One observation my wife and I had hasn’t been reported elsewhere is a contrast between this crowd and that which attended the Inauguration this year. There was no trash strewn around yesterday. All discards were made in trash receptacles, and when those overfilled, neat piles were established beside them.
The Inaugural crowd, whose sensitivity to matters environmental and concern for the Earth is supposedly unmatched, left behind a field of debris that took days to clean up.
Just an observation…
September 13th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Actually, one of Instapundit’s commenters noted that yesterday.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
This pattern goes all the way back to a Rush Limbaugh event years ago in Fort Collins that was called “Dan’s Bake Sale” — according to Limbaugh, city officials told him the site was left cleaner than the organizers found it.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I’ve seen no comment in the MSM, but am sure that it will get around.
September 13th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Thanks for posting that, Rand. The lack of media clarity on yesterday’s demo size has been annoying me, especially given the availability of real data, so I did some quick analyses. Not quite the same as analyzing Energia-lite’s likely performance from a blurry AvWeek photo back in the day, but still fun.
One quibble – “six figures” implies at least a hundred thousand, and I’d say the evidence indicates this demonstration was at minimum still over two hundred thousand, and most likely three hundred thousand-plus, possibly as large as five hundred thousand. “Hundreds of thousands” is the non-misleading and defensible description.
Make that two quibbles – it was a lot easier to come up with new and interesting angles on space and such back when you and Clark Lindsey and Jeff Foust and the rest weren’t all over things so much, covering things so well. I don’t think I could justify my own blog these days – at least not without working at it a whole lot harder! And I’m just getting over three-years-at-a-startup burnout; I’m keeping my options open as to what I will work hard at next.
best regards
Henry Vanderbilt
hvanderbilt@mindspring.com
September 14th, 2009 at 5:29 am
[...] a rather intensive crowd analysis by Henry Vanderbilt, over at Rand [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 5:42 am
The conflict will be resolved to the lowest plausible figure by the establishment press and their clients; numerous, bellicose and highly placed. It will have to be done again. Larger. And then again. Still larger. Really, no one who makes decisions is going to give a damn until midterms. That is around tax day of next year.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:47 am
I was there, the crowd wasn’t just what you see in the traffic cam.
We joined the march around 9:30 at 900 st. I was on the left side of the capital, near the largest tree and that area was packed.
People were coming from all directions and they kept flowing in for 3 hours.
The media isn’t biased, it’s complicit in the fed govt corruption.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:50 am
[...] Transterrestrial Musings gives two different ways to measure the crowd; the first one estimates between 240K-320K for the marchers and the second estimates between 330K-500K at the Capitol itself. Either way: use this as your baseline for what an actual populist, grassroots protest looks like. I mention this mostly for the Other Side, who seem highly incensed that we’re making this sort of thing look easy. [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 5:51 am
[...] Transterrestrial Musings gives two different ways to measure the crowd; the first one estimates between 240K-320K for the marchers and the second estimates between 330K-500K at the Capitol itself. Either way: use this as your baseline for what an actual populist, grassroots protest looks like. I mention this mostly for the Other Side, who seem highly incensed that we’re making this sort of thing look easy. [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 5:57 am
I’ve read a back-of-the-envelope calc from an attendee who puts the total around, for the whole day, a cool one million.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:05 am
A rough order of magnitude estimate is very easily accomplished. Examine the photo of the parade route from the Capitol to the Mall at maximum extent. Picture in your mind large concert or sporting event = fix the footprint in your mind. Overlay the known headcount from the event or concert over the photo. Extrapolate from there. 300,000+ seems very reasonable to me. The government run media has definitely attempted to manipulate the count. First by overestimation (2 million? I think not), then by undercounting – “tens of thousands.” Don’t be fooled – use your common sense. 300,000 real Americans showing up to reject the Republicrat Party’s tax and spend platform doesn’t fit the narrative.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:09 am
The fight is over already. They got their “tens of thousands” figure into the mainstream press. We can argue about it forever, that won’t change. What also won’t change is that congressmen don’t get to that position by being stupid about politics, and the congressmen have a pretty good idea of the real figures, and that is who we were trying to impress.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:13 am
We freepers are crowd-sourcing an analysis at this Google Docs spreadsheet: http://bit.ly/12xew6
September 14th, 2009 at 6:31 am
For what its worth i read this tweet:
RockfordTparty: Any bus going to Washington for the 912 rally must get a parking permit. Currently 4500 permits have been issued: ~250,000 people.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:36 am
I agree that the crowd was huge, much larger than the MSM will admit.
But the margins of error in the assumptions mean that the calculations are of little use. Big variation in the estimates of walking speed (100% range), density, etc., multiplied together, give huge error bars.
By the way, it may interest you to know that Harry Truman used the estimate of 2 people per square yard (4.5 square feet each) when he made a similar political crowd calculation in the as-told-to-book PLAIN SPEAKING.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Two observations.
One is, where did this come from? There were mass demonstrations in multiple cities on immigration, but the Left is supposed to be good at organizing these kinds of things. The demonstrations were not unexpected — I went to Spanish-language Mass at church one weekend, and very earnest-looking organizers were handing out literature afterwards in the back. Who is organizing these demonstrations?
Second, we are learning from Mr. Ahmadinejad that if demonstrations don’t get press coverage, they don’t effectively happen.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:47 am
Go look up the “Google Maps planometer” and you can calculate the area covered by the marchers directly. The video appears to show Penn Av covered from the Freedom Plaza to the Capitol; that’s about 60,000 m^2. Looking at videos of the actual march from ground-level, I think 1 person per square meter is a maximum limit on the crowd density during the march.
Comparably, the area covered by people around the Washington Monument during the inauguration was roughly the same. People were packed probably five or so times more densely in that area, and that was a small part of the total area densely covered in an event that drew about 1.8M people.
I have no clue who can look at the Daily Mail pic and think that that’s 3-4 sq feet per person. It’s not even close to that. I was impressed by the turn out when I caught the Penn Av video on the local news, but there’s no reason to delude yourselves.
September 14th, 2009 at 6:47 am
Crowd size. From snapshot of the video feed. Length from point of shot to Capitol x width of street (derived from sat image on Google) divided by 2.5 (figure used in most large crowd control counts) = Works out to about 350,000 STANDING only on the main street at that point in time…not counting the side streets and those still moving into the march….
Also consider that for every person present – how many were unable to attend..due to work, school, kids, health, etc. (3, 4, 5,…….20)
Message to Obama and Congress…an awful lot of folks dont like you and your agenda….and they are the majority that are the producers and the REAL taxpayers in this country……
September 14th, 2009 at 6:54 am
One thing that could explain the disparity between the first estimate and the second is that people continued arriving throughout. It is possible both are correct: that the march had 240,000 to 320,000 people and that later, at the Capitol, there were 330,000 to 500,000.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:00 am
The day of the event, NBC’s Tom Costello covered it, and said that the crowd size was “tens of thousands in the Park Service estimate, but hundreds of thousands in our own estimate…’ attaboy Tom!!
September 14th, 2009 at 7:01 am
We arrived from Delaware at about 10:45AM. Although people gathered around 9-9:30AM, the march did not actually start till 11AM. We were in the middle third. The march did not end till well after noon, maybe later. People were all around the Capitol and down the mall, all the way to the Wash Monument. I think The numbers cited were not accurate if they only depended on counts by 11:30AM. BTW: there were at least two helicopters overhead. Surely they took pictures? Who were they?
September 14th, 2009 at 7:04 am
[...] District candidate Tom Graves spoke to the tens of thousands (or maybe hundreds of thousands) of people at the 9/12 rally in Washington yesterday. Here is video of his [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 7:08 am
One thing to keep in mind here is I was deliberately conservative in my assumptions in making these estimates. 240K-320K on the march itself was based on the assumption that the marchers averaged 6 to 8 square feet per person, and averaged 1 mph. Now, from http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/2009/09/912-march-it-wasnt-just-numbers.html, there’s actual data – someone had a people-meter at 11th St along the march route and counted 450,000 people passing. Go with the higher crowd density and assume the actual march pace was closer to 1.4 mph, and voila, 450,000, 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 data 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 thousand, possibly approaching a million, look highly plausible.
Bottom line: All the media outlets minimizing the turnout as “tens of thousands” need to be firmly corrected. It was provably “hundreds of thousands”. I’m sure there are people reading here who’d enjoy the exercise
Henry Vanderbilt
September 14th, 2009 at 7:09 am
We went through this same sort of nonsense when I was protesting the Vietnam War in the late 1960s/early 1970s. In those days, the MSM was very pro-war (yes, they do seem to have forgotten that fact), and every demonstration in Washington was routinely trivialized and minimized in exactly the same fashion as the MSM and the Obamistas have been doing with the “Tea Parties”. We were paid demonstators, we were a “lunatic fringe”, we weren’t typical of how Americans felt, etc. Crowds were routinely undercounted, so the demonstrations just kept getting bigger…and bigger…and bigger, until in April 1970 a million people came to Washington. Nixon had a double row of DC Transit buses parked around the White House as an extra line of defense. We shut the city down…and THAT demonstration was neither underreported nor trivialized by the MSM. So keep trying!
September 14th, 2009 at 7:11 am
As a marcher I think you should know that as we were marching toward the Capital I pointed out to my wife the large number of people that joined the march at every intersection we passed, notwithstanding the fact that cross trafic was blocked. My guess is that these savy folks realized that by moving along pararel streets they could join up further on and get closer to the front. They were clearly not picked up by the traffic cams focused on the main march.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:16 am
My 2-3 cents, late as usual. I can’t comment on the first analysis (Pennsylvania Avenue), since we didn’t get there until after the protestors had moved on to the Capitol building – Metro was jammed.
As to the second analysis, I posted a short video clip (Protest Ends) on Shadow’s World that was taken as the protest ended with the singing of God Bless America. I was standing about 100 yards from the speakers’ podium and panned from the Washington Monument to the Capitol building, and would agree that my video pretty well confirms the analysis.
And as this was toward the end of the protest, I suspect it underestimates the total crowd size.
Half a million is, I think, a realistic estimate.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:17 am
“but most of them went into the profession because (among other reasons) they were told there would be no math.”
Most of them went into the profession believing they could make up their own math in support of their cause, without being called on it. The reality of their error is slowly dawning on them.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:19 am
The most accurate crowd count would be based on Porta-Potty volume.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:29 am
I would guess there were at least three times as many viewers as CNN in their prime time slot…I was there and the Capitol police said it was the largest and best behaved crowd they have ever seen …including the six million (yeah right) for the Inaguaration….Everyone on the bus I was on said they would come back anytime they were needed…we are going to win!!!!
September 14th, 2009 at 7:29 am
From past rallys I’ve been to on the Mall, I’d say this is closer to 1 million. First because of logistics the number of marchers was always less than the rally crowd. The subway gets backed up, people can’t all march, etc. The largest that I’ve attended was approx 250k and surrounded the Washinton Monument and stretched a little towards the Linoln Memorial. with large spaces (maybe 15ft+ wide) at places). smallest was probably 40k. The Mall tends to swallow up and make large gatherings look smaller. Tree lines split the area, not everyone goes into the designated areas, many come and go for extended breaks. Someone mentioned busses. Some rallys busses are main transportation. For this I would think more would drive separately, due to the individualistic nature of this movement. I didn’t attend this one, so not sure. But here’s the question how many smaller rally’s across the country occurred at the same time. 15-20 per state, maybe 1000 or more? Average a 1000 people at each of those and total for the day could be several million. Plus I attended a rally Sunday. Quick Estimate of 300-400.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Rand:
I just completed an extensive analysis. Based on the average per capita garbage tonnage left by the 1,000,000 people at the Obama inauguration, I am estimating there were 0.341 people at the rally (margin of error = 1.6 Starbucks cups).
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/01/hope-change-apocalyptic-garbage-blizzards.html
September 14th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Gauging it from the March for Life (usually 250k-500k), I would say that there were more than half a million. (I am not an expert, though I am a native Washingtonian and have seen more than a few demonstrations.) The people were fanned out around the Capitol front rather than confined to particular spaces, so it was larger than it may have appeared. Of course, the naysayers maintain that there were but a handful of “right wing nuts”–such is their need to diminish the impact of a startlingly large group of folks.
When I walked around the crowd with another priest, it was very dense. Crowds poured into the march from side streets along the way, and, when our contingent started from Freedom Plaza, Pennsylvaia Avenue was full for the whole route.
I will also note that it was one of the most polite groups of people I have ever encountered. There was little or no noticeable organization–just some volunteers giving direction. The marchers were orderly, civil and, yet, very intent about being heard. Their focus was properly directed to the statists and corporatists they had come to protest.
I am proud to have been there.
Best,
Fr. C.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:58 am
FYI, Washington DC police reported to the EMS unit down on the Mall that in their opinion the total attendance -including the Mall, the side streets of Constitution Ave and PA Avenue, the area north and south of the Capitol and all inbound multi-passenger vehicles numbered around 3.5 million.
Supposedly, hundreds of vehicles were effectively turned away from the Capitol Hill area in the morning because the traffic congestion was too great.
Still 3.5 million is excessive.
From what I can tell the body count is substantially North of 500,000 people.
I suspect that the NRO has already tasked a Big Bird to Keyhole the march and they’ve head counted everyone by now.
The Obama goons will release the numbers tha tthe NRO comes up with if they have number sshowing that the marchers number less than 100,000. If ht enumbers go over 500,000 you’ll never hear the final figure until Obama leaves the White House.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Heard that it could be around 2m
Olby will probably put it around 200
September 14th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Re: “This is the kind of analysis that it would be nice to get from journalists, but most of them went into the profession because (among other reasons) they were told there would be no math.”
At least John Tierney of the New York Times is honest about this: his blog says, John Tierney always wanted to be a scientist but went into journalism because its peer-review process was a great deal easier to sneak through.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:16 am
“I wasn’t there, but the pictures I’ve seen look like a lot of people.”
Well, I was there and I think the estimates of 60-70K are about right. The crowd was on the west lawn and around the reflecting pool to about 3rd St. with a few more on the Mall between 3rd and 4th. It wasn’t that dense until you got really close to the stage. There were people sitting down on blankets in places.
You could have fit everybody in a decent-sized football stadium.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Funny you should mention a “decent-sized football stadium.” I had the opportunity to walk down the stadium at the local college yesterday. I have been there with a measured crowd of 20,000 (ticket sales are pretty accurate). 60-70000 is way too few. 300,000+ with the error bar all on the up side is much more accurate. Not that the state run media will report it that way.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:39 am
[...] 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 [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 9:06 am
[...] a particularly lucid analysis: Money quote: It’s definitely “hundreds of thousands.” Not “millions”, no, nor mere [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 9:09 am
The time-lapse video of people marching up the avenue doesn’t tell the whole story at all.
Not everyone approached the Mall/Capitol along the same route, and some were earlier and some were later and some left in the middle, etc.
What about people approaching the Capitol from Union Station, the MARC and Metro stop? That must be a gargantuan number. Or from the opposite side of the Capitol from the Mall? Or straight down the Mall from, for example, the Smithsonian Metro stop? Or from behind the Agriculture Building?
Can we get some traffic figures from Metro, or is that a hopeless cause?
September 14th, 2009 at 9:14 am
[...] Some less questionable figures here. Don’t you wish the MSM could do basic [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 9:47 am
The March on Washington was about a quarter million strong. People were densely packed from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington monument during the speeches. This area is twice that covered by Saturday’s march (and no I’m not including the reflecting pool). There’s no way it topped 100,000 people. Go check out pictures of the September 2005 anti-war march of around 150,000 people to see what that number actually means when it comes to marching crowds.
It was an impressive turnout but there’s no reason to be silly.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Zach: If a quarter million people took up twice the area of this crowd, that would imply this crowd is half of a quarter million, or 125,000. How do you get that it was clearly less than 100k?
September 14th, 2009 at 10:22 am
[...] This offers some semi-scientific estimates of the crowd size, but you can be certain that whatever hapless soul at the police department gave out the estimate is now reassigned to garbage detail, while MSM works feverishly to downplay the number of people and play up the amount of crazies. We’ll probably never get much closer for the simple reason that MSM will not allow any discussion of whether there were anywhere near as many marchers as there were Obamatrons last January. [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 10:30 am
[...] commentators have had very interesting analyses of crowd size…interesting not only for the political import [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 10:48 am
The DC metro was jammed. I would also point out that some people were leaving as others were coming. Finally, there were a lot of people coming up and down side streets to Pennsylvania Ave. Chose whatever number you want, this 9/12 protest was huge and most unexpected even by the organizers who expected 25,000 to 30,000.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:35 am
[...] Thankfully though, not everyone is making things up because they want something to be true. Transterrestial Musings has two calculations using different methods which concluded 240,000 to 320,000 or 330,000 to [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 11:40 am
[...] District candidate Tom Graves spoke to the tens of thousands (or maybe hundreds of thousands) of people at the 9/12 rally in Washington yesterday. Here is video of his comments. [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Thank you for a GREAT analysis of the crowd. Oddly enough, it was very important to those of us who were there that day. We all knew it would be under-reported but felt the need to be “validated” by the crowd size, I guess.
I still haven’t posted pictures, video, and commentary to my own blog but found yours while scouring the internet for a good analysis/estimate of the 9/12 March crowd in DC. THANK YOU for putting some brainwork into coming to a reasonable estimate of the crowd!
My husband and I drove 10 hours from Kentucky to be in DC for this event. We were marching down Pennsylvania Ave at what you estimated to be the tail end of the march (after 11:10am). I know there were many, many, many more people marching after us because a large number of us were slowed down on our way to the march by the lack of available Metro transit trains, another organization that obviously underestimated the size of this event!
The start of the march was scheduled for 11:30am but, from what we were told by the organizers, the march started earlier when Capitol Police asked the organizers to forego the starting rally in Freedom Plaza and start the march early at 9 or 9:30 instead. I hear that there were thousands of people at the Plaza ready to go at 8am.
Your estimates seems right on to me. The crowd was comfortably spaced (unless you weren’t alert, in which case you’d be trampled by others in the march taking video and snapping pics!). While there were many, many people lining the sidewalks on the march route, most of them stayed in place and did not march on to the Capitol with us. A lot of them were wheelchair bound or elderly. It was terrific to see them show their support in a safe way as we did see one wheelchair bound woman suffer a seizure in the middle of the march route — we stopped to help and only moved on when told that EMS was on its way and a nurse and doc were with her to do what they could.
As for the Capitol lawn — I was very upset when I realized that people could have had room to sit down for a while if the rubber fencing had not been put up at the end of the lawn where it meets the sidewal. (We had to dodge a Capitol cop to jump up over the rubber fencing that was keeping a lot of us off the West Lawn where we were SUPPOSED to be.)
The crowd toward the back of the lawn was less dense because people couldn’t get through the standing crowd on the sidewalks (just outside the rubber fencing) to get around to an entry point up toward the front of the lawn. The back of the lawn was crowded but it was far less crowded than the sidewalks and parking lots!
No complaints though. Really! What a wonderful day it was, regardless of the actual numbers. I’m ready to do it again and next time, I will tell myself that numbers don’t really matter as much as we think they do… and then secretly, I’ll just hope you do your analysis again
Dawn
September 14th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
The crowd was made of GOOD PEOPLE.
If I had dropped my wallet, I would have got it back with interest.
Make no mistake about it, they were the good guys (and gals).
And, they absolutely adore Sarah Palin.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Crowd was not 2 million. I was at the March for Life and that was something like 250-300k.
This was HUGE. I estimate including early leavers and latecomers, it came to probably the 1.0-1.3 million.
It was much bigger than I thought. I was hoping for half a million.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I’m not sure if you’ve seen the picture we were sent; to me, this one looks well past 500K (but certainly not over 1 Million).
http://northtexasteaparty.org/2009/09/14/a-small-gathering-of-friends-in-dc/
September 14th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
[...] An Impression Of The Protest [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Mike O,
Your first picture is not from the 912 rally. It is a picture of a 1997 Promise Keepers rally.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
There are things soom people did not see,the whole capitol was surrounded all 4 corners.All streets filled.The announcers ask 2 times to clear 1st street behind the capitol.People got there early and were leaving by 2 but the amount to fill there spots were suffient.People just kept comming.Many people could not get there because of metro. buses, streets closed .The only one that knows for sure is home land security fling thier helicpter over head.They wil never tell. But we the people know how many people were thier.Numbers games will only make us stronger.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I was there and am so annoyed that even on Fox, they said tens of thousands. Five minutes ago, O’Reilly said 75,000.
It is inconceivable to me that there were any less than 200,000, and it felt more like 400,000 to me.
September 14th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
[...] Transterrestrial Musings – An Impression of the Protest [...]
September 14th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
There is no question in my mind that there were hundreds of thousands and probably a million or more, based on Vanderbilt’s analysis as well as my own observations. To wit, we were at the west lawn of the Capitol until about 1:30 when we decided to make our way back to the Metro Center station. As we got closer to the station, we saw fresh “troops” heading in, and in fact when the orange line train arrived to take us back to Dunn Loring, we thought “how are we going to fit?” But there were new marchers pouring out. In fact, by the time we got to our destination back home around 3:00 or so, there were some folks asking us if it was still going on, because they were heading down.
That time lapse video doesn’t capture it all.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
[...] (via RCP), venturing only that “the crowd was truly huge.” Mark Hemingway commends Rand Simberg’s estimate of the crowd size between 240,000 and half a million, in line with John’s remarks. [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I saw a few snippets on the news and, of course, read several stories on the blogs. It is no surprise that those opposed to the Tea Party concept are trying to down play it. Arguing over numbers is exactly what they want to do, rather than actually consider why people are protesting.
The fact is, on April 15th, the Tea Party’s were considered a one time event. Then around Memorial Day, we were told they wouldn’t last the summer. There were large crowds on July 4th, but they were compared to average July 4th crowds.
Well, the Tea Partiers are still around at the start of the 2010 election run up. There is no question that each time an event is held, it is larger than the previous event. All the attempts to marginalize the Tea Partiers have lead to even larger membership. Attempts to demonize the Tea Partiers as just GOP’ers has lead to more true liberals joining the cause. Attempts to call them racists has lead to minorities joining the cause. Claiming they are only against Obama has caused unhappy Obama voters to join the cause.
I say, keep it up!
September 15th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
That time lapse video doesn’t capture it all.
Somnething like this is a bit difficult to capture by conventional means — it’s like trying to take a photograph of the Grand Canyon.
September 15th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
[...] One Attempt. [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
1) Virtually no one was marching on the sidewalks, the street width is 100 ft.
2) Look into rank and file or military marches, tightly packed is 12.5 sq. ft. per person, normally packed is 25 sq. ft. per person. I’ve used 25 sq. ft. per person as the marchers were highly randomly packed and did not ever form a well ordered column or formation.
3) I used a higher speed of 3 ft/sec (IMHO high or non-conservative estimate)
4) Elapsed time of 5700 seconds (based on start/stop frames).
5) 42 frames total, exactly 300 sec/frame.
Using the above, a much more realistic estimate of ~68,000 is obtained, that would be a slightly high estimate, given the higher assumed median walking speed.
6) The Inauguration had 240,000 people in the ticketed areas, the ticketed areas were much more densly packed then this rally, by a factor of 2-3.
Therefore, at best, this rally had an in situ population of 80,000 to 120,000 people, tops.
Thus giving a nice round number of 100,000 or O(6).
September 15th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I agree with your analysis except for the square footage per person. The videos I’ve seen show more like 20-30 square feet per person and a not-very-densely packed road. There is easily 4-5 feet between rows of marchers and another couple feet between them side-to-side, even in the most densely packed sections. There are lots of parked cars, lots of displays set up, lots of empty sidewalks, lots of empty space. Do you have actual video closeups (so we can be sure it’s not a temporary nonmoving glut) that show something different?
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34668_Video-_Bad_Craziness_in_Washington_DC
September 15th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I’m still confused.
I was driving home to Winchester VA from Philadelphia on the 12th, and decided to take a swing through downtown DC so I could see what was going on.
I arrived around 2:00pm. Managed to drive down Constitution, Pennsylvania, Independence, and passed both Madison and Jefferson. Traffic was no heavier than it usually is on a weekend in that part of town. Didn’t see any large crowds on the Mall; I circled back several times.
I saw people here and there with signs and such. I thought it was over at that point and people were still hanging around afterward.
I would think that, if the crowd were in the hundreds of thousands, I would have seen a lot more people, and more streets would have been blocked off. But there weren’t.
Did I miss something?
September 15th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
p.s. – “The Western Experience” claims that official sources say Pennsylvania Ave. is only 160 feet wide, and the videos show that there are clearly parked cars and demonstration signs all over it, not to mention that the sidewalks are empty most of the time. Want to scale down your estimates even more?
September 15th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
We did it on 9/12.
It was the tip of the Iceberg…..
The tip of the spear.
It will only grow, because Obama and Congress are genetically incapable of keeping their mouths shut.
Watch as the iceberg rises.
September 16th, 2009 at 10:12 am
I arrived around 2:00pm.
Did I miss something?
Yes.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:48 am
The nominal curb-to-curb width of Pennsylvania Avenue is 100 feet, You can measure it directly from orthophotos (DC Atlas or USGS) or download DC Atlas GIS data in ESRI shapefiles for the roadways for the entire DC (RoadPly.zip).
One hundred feet. That’s it. Period.
That’s the maximum roadway width (curb-to-curb) of Pennsylvania Avenue.
September 16th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I have not ability in estimating crowds but I was there and I can attest to several things:
1. We arrived at Freedom Plaza at 9:00AM. We started walking to the US Capitol at 10:00am and there were many, many, many people in front of us.
2. We walked at a very leisurely pace and were not elbow to elbow but it was certainly packed enough that you had to watch where you were walking and it was a dense population. There were also people lined on both sides of the street (not walking) the entire route.
3. We arrived at the US Capitol somewhere around 11:15 to 11:30am – well I should say within a block of the Capitol where the Santi Cans were located. We had to wait for approximately 30 minutes to use the Johns.
4. We then stood on the grassy hill for about 30 minutes talking to people. From there we watched bus loads of people stream in from the north side of the Capitol who apparently had been let off from buses.
5. We could also see people streaming in from the south of the mall area who again apparently had been let off on buses.
6. We then changed locations, moving to the Mall side of the reflection pond by the arboretum. We stood around the south side of the reflection pool and watched the crowd continue to stream in from the Freedom Plaza area for a good 2 hours (this would be approximately 12:30pm to just after 2:00pm.
7. We then left the area and had to go down town to eat as there were lines hours long to get into any place around the area that had food and we felt they would probably run out of food before we were eventually served.
We were told just before we left that the crowd had been estimated by police at 1.5 million. I can guarantee you that what ever the size of the crowd – it has huge, peaceful, friendly, courteous, clean and upset with our lack of representation in Washington DC. These people were your common every day Americans from all across the country.
September 16th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
How many Blacks, Asians, and Latinos were at this rally?
I’ve looked at literally thousands of images (Flickr keyword 912DC and elsewhere) and can count the total number of minorities that I’ve seen so far on one hand.
Seriously. Like I was actually looking for minorities even.
The crowd was overwhelmingly white and the majority were middle aged and older.
What’s up with that?
September 16th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Hey, just a quick note to say that the Gormogons have withdrawn our million-people figure, since the main picture we were analyzing turned out to be from a 1997 Promise Keepers’ rally.
Oops.
At any rate, the official count for that crowd (as the Park Police still did it back then) was 1.4 million. But as you and our Czar pointed out, the issue of what density one assumes is critical. Likely the 1.4M figure is also (inadvertently) inflated by using too great a density.
Anyway, thanks for the link, and sorry if we misled anyone. We are currently searching for the fiend who mislabeled the picture. Hideous consequences will ensue. —孔夫子
September 16th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
[...] estimate by Henry Vanderbilt, reported at Transterrestrial Musings. Using two different methods, Vanderbilt arrived at one estimate of up to 320,000 in the march down [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 5:39 am
The crowd was overwhelmingly white and the majority were middle aged and older.
What’s up with that?
Well, what’s mysterious about this? That’s the ethnic makeup of this group with a grievance. Are you going to claim their grievances are invalid or the group is even racist because they have too many old white guys in there? Life isn’t a PC bologna commercial.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Just noting the demographics which don’t match the national demographics at all.
Compare this group (mostly older white conservatives/libertarians) with the 1.8 million group at the Inauguration.
Which of these two in situ groups more closely fits the national demographics, also known as We The People?
September 17th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Which of these two in situ groups more closely fits the national demographics, also known as We The People?
I thought this nation was supposed to be beyond prejudice. Why is this even relevant?
If the feds were considering legislation to round up left-handed people into prison camps, I’d expect a disproportionate number of southpaws to march on DC. Does this make their grievance less legit because the inauguration “more closely fit” the national demographics of We The People?
September 17th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Just making sure that the phrase “We The People” doesn’t apply to just a very narrow well defined demographic of people who happen to show up that day.
That is all.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
If you take the phrase in the context as Ken was using it, it applies to “we the people” who were there as opposed to those who were not there and thus are belittling those who were.
To lift it out of that context and presume that people who were not there are sub-humans who deserve no representation is to invent a pretext for offense.
To continue the example, if the pundits were to belittle the southpaw march on DC by deflating the numbers, and an attendee were to say that “we the people know how many were there”, it would not mean that right-handed people were not a member of “We The People” as mentioned in the US Constitution or were otherwise less important.
That is all.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Just making sure that the phrase “We The People” doesn’t apply to just a very narrow well defined demographic of people who happen to show up that day.
The sincerity just oozes. Eve if it were just old whites, that’s still a large demographic. And calling that demographic “very narrow” is just a racist insult. Caucasian is a huge demographic category. There are probably 2-2.5 billion people who fall in that category including most asian Indians. A lot of those people happen to be “old”.
September 18th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Seriously. Like I was actually looking for minorities even.
Racist people do tend to look at the color of people’s skin first before considering the merit of their message.
September 18th, 2009 at 7:54 am
Racist people tend to self identify with others of their ilk.
912DC proves that conclusively.
September 18th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Racist people tend to self identify with others of their ilk.
912DC proves that conclusively.
This is an interesting comment. How does your first sentence work with the second? Are you saying you, being a racist, recognized other racists in the crowd? Or, are you saying that because you saw a large group of white people, you just assumed they were racist? If the latter, are you saying the population of Vermont proves conclusively Vermont is racist?
September 18th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I’m saing that you should just look into the mirror of reality.
September 18th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I’m saing that you should just look into the mirror of reality.
Oh I see, you look in mirrors and see a racist.
September 18th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Oh I see, you look in mirrors and see a racist.
September 21st, 2009 at 1:40 pm
[...] This post was Twitted by LessThanLiz [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I found the analysis offered here very sophomoric. I have done my own study base on devised methodology and calculation which you can find here:
http://deathbymedia.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/912-washington-dc-tea-party-rally-crowd-estimation/
It’s backed by evidence (pictures and clips) and determining the boundaries of the protesters and calculation of final tally derived from the density of the crowd at each given block. My calculus puts the figures around 130k up to 160k.
September 24th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
[...] estimate by Henry Vanderbilt, reported at Transterrestrial Musings [4]. Using two different methods, Vanderbilt arrived at one estimate of up to 320,000 in the march [...]
September 24th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
[...] estimate by Henry Vanderbilt, reported at Transterrestrial Musings. Using two different methods, Vanderbilt arrived at one estimate of up to 320,000 in the march down [...]
September 25th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Surprise, UR is just a racist troll. Well, at least this exchange has just demonstrated the futility of reasoing with such people. Remember that for the future, folks.
September 25th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Surprise, Titus is just a racist troll. Well, at least this exchange has just demonstrated the futility of reasoing with such people. Remember that for the future, folks.
September 26th, 2009 at 3:43 am
Yes, and an utter child, too.
September 26th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Yes, you are an utter child, too.
September 26th, 2009 at 5:37 am
Predictable, but at least the parrot isn’t thread-crapping on the rest of the site, so there’s that ray of sunshine…
September 26th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Predictable, but at least Titus is thread-crapping on the rest of the site.
January 31st, 2010 at 6:44 am
Better luck next time, statists…