01-21-2017, 10:29 PM
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see you later, I'm gone
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 14,057
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Here is a good article from before the inauguration discussing the "Crowd size" issue.
By the way, I also found references all the was back to a Teddy Roosevelt speech where crowd size was talked about and disagreed about. As I said earlier, it is a very common subject to be discussed about an event along with the comparisons to past events.
Record-setting or underwhelming: Does the size of inaugural crowds really matter? | News | bdtonline.com
Quote:
Record-setting or underwhelming: Does the size of inaugural crowds really matter?
Jan 19, 2017
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump says his inauguration will have “an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout.” Organizers of a protest the next day call it the biggest demonstration in history to welcome a new president.
Exactly how many people actually show up for both events will likely never be known.
Counting the number of people at major public events is as much art as science, and there will be no official tally of how many people attend either Friday’s inaugural festivities or the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday.
Here’s a look at why crowd size is so mysterious.
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IT STARTS WITH THE MILLION MAN MARCH
For decades, the National Park Service provided official crowd estimates for gatherings on the National Mall. That changed after the Million Man March in 1995, a gathering of black men meant to show renewed commitment to family and solidarity. The park service estimated 400,000 people attended the march, making it one of the largest demonstrations in history in Washington.
But organizers believed they reached their goal of 1 million participants. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, one of the march organizers, threatened to sue the park service, arguing its count was motivated by “racism, white supremacy and hatred for Louis Farrakhan.” Researchers at Boston University did an independent analysis and said the crowd was much bigger, pegging it at more than 800,000.
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HOW CROWDS ARE COUNTED
Before it stopped, the park service came up with its crowd figures by studying aerial photographs. Using a grid system, the park service would divide the Mall into sections of equal square footage. Then it counted the number of people in each section of the grid by looking at how tightly packed the crowd was and assigning a number of people per square foot.
Not much has changed since about the way crowds are estimated, said Steve Doig, a journalism professor at Arizona State University who specializes in measuring crowd sizes.
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PAST INAUGURATIONS
Any time a crowd reaches into the hundreds of thousands, it’s a noteworthy gathering, Doig said, but boosters will always try to politicize the turnout for their chosen cause.
“One of the things that aggravates me ... is the need for it to be huge,” he said. “It sort of drives the numbers into areas where it just clearly is fiction and it undercuts the reality of what really is an amazing crowd.”
Trump clearly cares about posting a big number.
In a video ad posted on social media Wednesday, he said: “Hopefully we’re going to get a million people. We’re going to really make a big statement.”
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