I remember going to a hearing on Senator Alan Spears’ attempt at an “assault weapon” ban back in the late eighties, up on Capitol Hill (Saint Paul, not DC).
Despite the usual DFL shenanigans to keep outstate, pro-freedom people from making it to the Capitol to flood the hearing rooms, 600 of us showed up. That was a hard, reliable count.
Six hundred.
Indoors. They had to link two more hearing rooms to the main one via closed-circuit TV.
Against us, perhaps a dozen orcs sat at the right-hand of the hearing table.
So the leader of the Public Safety Committee – a metrocrat DFLer – looked over the mob of animated but polite faces arrayed in front of her, cast her gaze the tiny coterie of lumpen stasi wannabees on her side, and said for the records “I think both sides look about evenly represented here today”.
I think about that every time lefties try to count crowds. I remember the “Million Mom March”, which claimed somewhere in six figures (and the DC Park Police called more like 30,000, which is about 3,000 times as many as they can draw for a rally today.
And of course, here in Minnesota, it cuts both ways. During the great Tax Cut Rallies of the mid-nineties, the Twin Cities leftymedia would routinely claim audiences of around 1,000 – when I would count to 1,000 myself, and could see that I’d gotten maybe 1/5 of the crowd.And I came up with the following formula:
- For liberal rallies: divide whatever the press claims by 10 (and whatever the Sorosphere or leftybloggers claim by 20).
- For conservative rallies: multiply whatever the leftymedia claim by at least five.
And that should generallly give you an accurate count.
Now, I wasn’t at last Saturday’s tax rally – I have little doubt that turnout was lower than normal if only because of the weather – but experience tells me that whatever the left says about these rallies is wrong at best, a lie at worst.
(And when lefties are qualified to lecture the rest of us about numbers, we won’t see stories like this. Give it up,lefties; leave the counting to the adults).
Or, you could like actually count:
http://tinyurl.com/4trf7e
via Bob Collins
Here’s a picture from the SCSU Scholars Web site:
The original full-size can be found here. It appears to be show center, and would appear to represent the largest part of the crowd. How many do you think are shown here?
395. I counted (hat tip to the person in the comments section who suggested a “punch”)
To be the 5-7,000 claimed, there would have to be a spillage to the left and right of the steps, 5-6 times the number shown here on each side of show center. And the above photos show that clearly isn’t the case, especially with the tents on the right side showing there’s no spillover on that side.
The 1,000 figure may not be dead on the mark, but it appears to be quite accurate.
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His analysis is pretty good. I hope those of you won’t instinctively scoff at it just because his result isn’t what you want.
There are other things in those photos that are far more telling than the body count. I am sure you all know exactly what I am talking about.
Flash
Mitch,
I wasn’t at the rally, either, but experience tells me that organizers typically over-estimate and opponents under-estimate, regardless of party or issue.
The reason? In information design, it’s well-established that people have difficulty accurately perceiving quantities portrayed as an area, which is what crowd estimating is. Without actually counting, interested observers are likely to be off in the direction that suits their preconceptions. You may call that a lie, but given your field, I think you know better.
Of course I do.
And I’m being purposefully-aggressive in my rhetoric.
But the fact remains that, through skullduggery or cognitive bias, the media did habitually report Tax Rally attendance figures, for years, that were a fraction of what even the Capitol Police reported.
Just trying to keep people honest, here.