Aiming to close down those wasteful big government socialist programs… This sort of thing can’t really be the goal though, can it?
Aiming to close down those wasteful big government socialist programs… This sort of thing can’t really be the goal though, can it?
The goal is more likely to do something about this.
Just cutting taxes ain’t gonna to squat about making that graph look better.
You know it’s funny… The world is always going to hell in a hand basket… Yet we’re still here… Okay it’s not that funny.
Just cutting taxes ain’t the aim of the tea parties.
Then they have something of a marketing problem.
They also have both an honesty problem and a basic math problem (ironic), since they falsely claimed that ABC reported over a million people at the rally, when the estimate is a couple orders of magnitude lower.
No wonder they think taxes are too high, they don’t know the difference between 50,000 and 5 million.
I hadn’t heard about the 5 million people claim… Where did you hear this?
Of course the tea parties aren’t directed solely to cutting taxes — that would be taking the name of protests far too literally, to the exclusion of the rest of (or bulk of) their message. How could anyone have missed all the tea party signs and protests about runaway gov’t spending? That message is at least as prevalent as cutting taxes, if not more so. That message was also as clear as day to critics, some of whom have taken to arguing that the protesters are hypocrites for not denouncing spending under Bush with equal fervor. The merits of that argument aside, it’s simply disingenuous to say that the tea party protests are aimed only at cutting taxes.
As for the size of the protest, I haven’t seen anyone claim it was 5M. Here is one attempt to calculate the true size.
5 million was a typo, the claim was 1.5 million.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/protest-crowd-size-estimate-falsely-attributed-abc-news/story?id=8558055
Also, the unofficial count from the Park and Capital police was 60-70,000.
As for the Pajama’s Media “count”. I’ll take with a huge grain of salt something coming from a site that has prominent ads for Joe “I lied” Wilson.
Yeah, I couldn’t find any obvious mistakes in that Pajamas Media count either.
You don’t think claiming a source with unverifiable data and an unknown counting method (something they point out in the article) as a true count is not an obvious mistake? You think ignoring the count, unofficial as it was, of the local police is not an obvious mistake? You think taking a semi-random set of numbers and using an average of that is not an obvious mistake? Have you ever taken a class on statistics or scientific data analysis in your life?
No, no, no, and yes. What counting method was used by the police? Was that unofficial number verified? Why is one unverifiable number obtained by an unknown counting method more trustworthy than another? Hell, we know more about how the metered count was obtained than we do about what the police does to estimate crowds, which is a notoriously difficult task. Some fairly simple math can be used to make fairly defensible estimates of crowd sizes. The author was making an educated guess of crowd size using “back of the envelope” calculations, not a scientific analysis. If there are reasons to doubt those calculations, I still haven’t heard them.
If you don’t think those are reasons to doubt the numbers, then you aren’t willing to doubt them. Not surprising given your past behavior on this blog, but pretty sad none the less.
If you can’t address the problems with those reasons, then they aren’t good reasons.
I’m always willing to doubt what I read on Pajamas Media — only cranks would ever write for that outfit!
Estimating crowd size is an inherently fraught exercise.
I will say this, without hesitation, it was less than a quarter of the number of people that showed up for the inauguration.
How do I know this? Obama’s Inauguration was about double or more what showed up for Clinton. Obama’s inauguration made an all out nightmare out of the mall and general traffic patterns in the area and decimated Metro’s ability to function–granted it was a week day so you had office traffic and event traffic–but Metro basically collapsed under the load. The Clinton inauguration was a mess and over ran metro, but not nearly to the extent Obama’s did. The Tea parities didn’t merit a blip. In terms of messing with the overall traffic patterns and metro usage in the DC area. AND was scheduled on the same day as the Nations Triathlon that cause far more of a general traffic headache than the Tea Party (Mostly due to a somewhat significant road closure headed north of the City to Rock Creak Park through Georgetown, if you honestly think the police would have allowed Obama’s inauguration and a triathlon on the same day, you are barking mad) and in all likelihood a not insignificant portion of tri geeks were were captured by the metered count cited by PJ media. Again, there were two completely separate major events on the Mall / mall area on Sunday. And even taken both together they made hardly a hiccough on local traffic patters and didn’t come close to swamping either the roads or the mass transit system. So in terms of order of magnitude this was less than a quarter of Obama’s inauguration, and probably far less. Also the local hotel situation hardly had a blip also. Put simply 800,000 is a laughable number. For comparison sake though, in Times Square on any give day, 3-4 million people will walk past a given point. Without an “average day” number for the meter location, Or, really last year’s Nations Tri number, the metered count is all but meaningless. And that is the only thing PJ is hanging their hat on for their number. 70,000 Is probably reasonable, but a little high.
Then I will say this, without hesitation: The triathlon was on Sunday, the day after the tea party, so trying to attribute the number of tea party protesters to the triathlon is erroneous. Also, I heard the local news myself report that at least some buses were no longer being let into the District on Saturday, and that certain Metro lines were stopped due to capacity issues. While these no doubt pale in comparison to the issues surrounding inaugurations, claiming that the tea parties “didn’t merit a blip” is overstating things a bit.
Sorry, News story was from the 13th, and said day of event. Which would be Sunday. I wasn’t finding a published date for the event.
Although in all fairness to the event, the fact that I didn’t even notice it living in the area means it was, to put it mildly, a rather small thing. I did notice a fuck ton of motorcycles on sunday with their standard POW MIA flags… were they part of the event?
Yeah, I also live in the area, and was down in DC that day. I had actually forgot that the protests were even happening until that evening, that’s how little effect they had on the city. And I’m not saying that to be partisan, it’s the truth.
Personally I think 70,000 people is a pretty hefty number, heck, it’s definitely more people than we had at the Prop 8 protest there.
They just shouldn’t try and pretend it broke 100k, not even close.
Crowd size = 200k+ based on ridership numbers from DC Metro?
Laplace transforms weren’t used so take it for what it’s worth…
That assumes that there were no other events going on in DC that weekend, which we allready know isn’t true.
Perhaps, but what other events? If you’re referring to the triathlon that dcl mentioned, we already know it wasn’t held until the next day…
Joe Mama: You have to rack your bike on Saturday for the nation’s triathlon, so every contestant was down there. And traffic was normal in the city that day, because I was using google maps to route a friend who needed directions through DC and the traffic reports were normal for a Saturday afternoon.
Like I said, living here, I had completely forgotten that the thing was even happening.
Honestly, what pthread mentions is sort of the nail in the coffin for the bigger numbers. If Metro isn’t adding trains to deal with the load, isn’t re-scheduling track maintenance, there aren’t major traffic tie ups you didn’t break 100k. I’ve lived here long enough to know the difference between a major protest on the mall and a standard protest on the mall. This was above average, but it wasn’t major by any stretch.
Also, NRO misses one thing with there “if you came from VA you had to take metro” A whole lot of people Walked across those closed bridges. I left the city walking across Memorial bridge. It was packed with pedestrians for quite a while and most of them were locals and cold so everyone was booking it.
I have no interest in either hyping or downplaying the crowd size, I’m just interested in the supportable approximations of how many protesters there were. I, too, have lived here long enough to know when significant protests are happening in DC, and every news update I heard on tv and radio on Saturday was talking about the tea party (to be fair, I didn’t know about it either prior to Saturday).
Honestly, how many competitors registered for the triathlon? 5k? 6k? While bikes are allowed on the Metro, how many competitors do you think actually brought their bikes in on Saturday via the Metro? I was on the Orange line on Saturday and didn’t see any. This weekend I did see more than your average number of cars with bike racks, however. And of course, the number that would’ve brought their bikes in on a bus has to be close to nil. Moreover, how many spectators came into the District on Saturday to watch the competitors rack their bikes on the day before the race? I’m just not seeing how the triathlon on Sunday had any meaningful impact on the number of protesters there were on Saturday.
And since everyone else is giving their hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck gut feeling about how many protesters there were, here’s mine: 150k-200k. Based solely on looking at the photos and having attended sold out Big Ten football games with 100k other people.
Registration for nations tri was 12k this year. It was way over-registered, that’s a different issue. Generally people ride the bike down to the transition station, rack it and set their stuff then take metro home. Unless they are coming from particularly far away. (Yes I do know way too much about this stuff… Also a seprate issue.)
Honestly, given the nature of the event an accurate number of people is nearly impossible. I think 400k plus is crazy talk. I think it was certainly a good size group certainly above average. But It wasn’t crippling to the area, which generally starts at around 150 – 200k or so going to a single event and depending on when and what else is going on. At least in my experience. It did put pressure on a few stations which puts it at minimum football / baseball game getting out. Which means at least around 70k. (Thinking of what a Redskins game getting out of RFK use to do to the Armory stop) Then again, a Nats game getting out at the Navy Yard pressures that station and we are only talking about 20k people there (on a good day).
All in all, there is a usable range of numbers that seem accurate, or plausible. But the range is so big that it makes it almost meaningless. But it’s hard to sell it was “a big protest” or an “above average protest” so people will try.
My key point is that the people trying to put this in the same crowd ball park as the Obama inauguration are just flat out insane. I’ve never seen an event that crazy on the mall. And it was crazy and completely over run. I seriously doubt we will ever see something like that again. Then again I was shocked at how big it was. I can’t imagine what would have happened if it was one of DC’s freak warm days in January.
Joe Mama: Just to be clear I don’t think you are trying to over-inflate the numbers. You haven’t strayed out of the territory of anything that *could* have happened, just what I think did happen, based on what I’ve read and just being around the city that day.
One more thing on the tri, a lot of people come in for that tri from out of town, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a lot of families of tri participants doing touristy stuff on Saturday. My comment on racking bikes was only to say that everyone racing was at least in the DC area for that weekend. I was supposed to race in it but unfortunately sustained an overuse injury during training. :/
As an aside, how many DCers do we have as regulars on Brendan’s blog. We need to get together some time in some sort of cult-like gathering and worship photos of Brendan. This Obama cult-of-personality stuff is getting old already, time for a new one! 🙂
From my understanding there are a fair few of us.
From my understanding you didn’t miss much on nations tri. The people I know who did it were saying that due to the fact the race was way over registered the bike course was exceptionally dangerous. Too many TT bikes with sketch handling and a few tight turns with people that aren’t use to riding around other people lead to lots and lots of crashes, close calls and general mayhem. It was apparently impossible to follow the rules regarding drafting the course was so swamped.
Charlie Martin provides an update (including a nice panoramic photo):
Just sayin’.
LOL. I try and describe you as not offering any numbers that were impossible, and you come to us with this? “I don’t think there is a plausible argument for any total attendence figure much less than 500,000 to 600,000.”
Ha!
Well let’s first point out that nothing he argues before he makes that statement even suggests anything in the 5-600,000 range. He goes from a couple to a few hundred thousand (which I still think is way wrong, but not *completely* impossible) to all of the sudden, “yeah, this means it must be at least a half million people.”
wat.
And that picture they are circulating as somehow proof that it was a half million people? Are you kidding me? I was thinking that perhaps the fire department may have been off and it could have topped 100k but after seeing that picture I now find that doubtful. Regardless, it simply does not show a half million people.
There aren’t even people on the grass of the mall. It’s tiny. Take a look at a picture of the million man march sometime, a rally that is estimated to have 600k-1,000k people at it. It dwarfs that picture.
So again. 100k to 200k? *Maybe*. 500k-600k being the floor? Laughable.
That’s a picture of 100K people at the absolute outside. Honestly it looks more like around 70-80K. I’m assuming there are number of people out of frame. So I won’t argue 100K. But, if there were 500,000 to 600,000 people there then there were 8 million plus people at Obama’s inauguration. And that’s just not the case. And it isn’t the case here. A large protest for sure. But don’t try and argue the crowd was an order of magnitude bigger than it was it makes all the arguments after that seem foolish.
Don’t get excited, the only numbers actually offered by me were 150k-200k. Don’t make the mistake of assuming I whole-heartedly endorse every word in every link I post. I simply passed along another estimate that finally had a decent photo that, in my opinion — which is no less supportable than either of yours — shows a crowd easily in the hundreds of thousands, and that the 60k-70k estimate laughable.
Speaking of inaugurations, according to this Park Service guide for Obama’s inauguration, the crowd easily tops 200k just by being on the Capital grounds up to 3rd street, which looks pretty close to what is shown in that panoramic photo of the tea party, so let’s not pile on too much faux incredulity, shall we…
It looks like a bit over half a side of the Coliseum full of people. A full LA coliseum is a bit over 100k so 70-80 in the photo is reasonable, and we must assume there are people outside the photo.
The thing is, people are particularly bad at crowd estimates, so I would go with the pros before I go with the people sitting around in their PJ’s…
That’s part of the problem, there are no “pros”…but the Nat’l Park Service guide works for me.
Did the park service release a number?
No. I was referring to the guide that I linked to above.
Correction: Upon closer inspection, the source for the guide I linked to above that was published in USA Today in January is Claire McPhail of the Univ. of Illinois (which the article describes as an “expert in crowd estimation,” so I guess there are “pros” after all).
Correction: Clark McPhail
Yes, but the image shows the mall being filled. In the picture released there isn’t anyone standing on the grass along the mall.
Sorry, in case that was unclear, ‘the image’ refers to the USA Today image. ‘The picture’ refers to the one linked from the article you linked to earlier, the one supposedly from the Capital Building itself.
That’s why I said 200k instead of the 240k noted by the image had the entire segment of the mall closest to the Capitol been filled. That said, the photo shows people outside the shaded areas of the USA Today image, so it’s probably a wash.