How Big Was Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" Rally?

[FrankRep]

Estimates of the attendance at Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally varied dramatically, from 87,000 people reported by CBS News to Beck's 500,000 estimate to Michele Bachmann's one million — but is there any way of determining how many were really there? By Bruce WalkerHow Big Was Beck's "Restoring Honor" Rally? (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/4472-how-big-was-becks-restoring-honor-rally)


Bruce Walker | The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/)
31 August 2010


The “Restoring Honor” rally that Glenn Beck held in Washington this past weekend brought in huge numbers of people from all over the nation. Anyone who watched the coverage of the event could see that.

CBS News has a reputation of slanting the news that stretches back to documentaries like “Hunger in America” (which wrongly described the death of a child as caused by hunger) and “The Selling of the Pentagon” (which took the answers that an Assistant Secretary of State gave to one question and, through editing, made his answer appear to be to a completely different question.) One might think that the network could be interested, in a much more competitive news market, in gaining respect for objectivity. Apparently not. Obviously, the number of people who attended the Restoring Honor rally cannot be determined exactly, but must be based on estimates — though hopefully the various estimates would be in the ballpark of reality and not vary radically (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/08/29/2010-08-29_crowd_estimates_at_glenn_becks_restore_america_ rally_depend_dramatically_on_who_.html).

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann estimated that one million people attended the rally. Beck himself estimated less — 500,000 (http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/08/30/glenn-beck-estimates-restoring-honor-rally-crowd-at-500-000-video/). The National Park Service, which has been ordered off the official estimate business since the Million Man March of 1995, gave MSNBC an unofficial estimate of 300,000. ABC News thought “over 100,000” attended. Even the New York Times thought perhaps half a million people were at the event. So what was the estimated crowd size according to CBS News? 87,000 people.

Photos posted by Noel Sheppard (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/08/28/glenn-beck-rally-picture-guaranteed-drive-media-crazy) at Newbusters show that the mall was completely packed from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. The BBC photo (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11121542), in particular, shows an overflowing crowd.

The actual size of the entire National Mall that the public could occupy is 11.5 million square feet (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_big_is_The_National_Mall) (11,500 feet from the steps of the Capital to the Lincoln Memorial and 1,000 feet wide). If everyone at the rally had 3.5 feet in each direction of empty space, then attendance at the rally would have been one million — Congresswoman Bachman’s estimate. If the CBS News figure is correct and 87,000 people attended the rally, then each person in attendance would have 172.4 square feet or each person would be separated, on average, from the other attendees by 13.1 feet.

If each member at the rally had five feet of space in each direction — 25 square feet per person or five feet, on average, in every direction — then the crowd would be an estimated 460,000 people over the area of the National Mall, which was about what Glenn Beck estimated. Considering that in the photos of the crowds, large sections of the area photographed has people packed closely together, with less than five feet of separation, then that number is probably a low-ball figure. What is particularly curious about the CBS News estimate is that it was provided by an aerial AirPhotosLive. What is not curious at all is that CBS News, which has been completely unsympathetic over the years to the message Beck had at the rally, came back with an extraordinarily low estimate.


SOURCE:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/4472-how-big-was-becks-restoring-honor-rally

[tangent4ronpaul]

Lets consider this from another perspective. Beck's viewership fell from 2.9M in Jan to 2.1M in April. Lets call that 3M and 2M respectively.

http://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-glenn-beck-ratings-down-by-30-this-year-2010-4

So we have claims of 1M and 0.5M participants at the most inflated. As a rule of thumb, only 10% of an organizations members will actually do anything - let alone spend hundreds of dollars to get on a bus and travel half way across the country.

Is it realistic to think that if the 1M estimate is correct that 1 in 3 or 1 in 2 of Becks viewers did so?

Is it realistic to think that if the 0.5M estimate is correct that 1 in 6 or 1 in 4 of Becks viewers did so?

In both cases, the answer is clearly no. So if we are going to get above the 0.1M range, where did the others come from?

He did have 50-100 leaders of various religious faiths on the stage, and I'm guessing most were local. It's easy to imagine them putting their congregations on busses and bringing them in. Still, that's not going to amount to that many.

Palin surely has a mailing list, and an e-mail from her could have resulted in the biggest draw.

It was also a pro-military rally, and there is a lot of military in the area.

So what kind of a draw could these other elements provide and who was in the audience? It's looking like the majority were neither Tea Party'rs nor Beck viewers if the attendance got anywhere near 0.5M

One striking characteristic of the crowd was the lack of young faces. That is fairly consistent with the tea party. To rally under the word "HONOR" is somehow disturbing, it reminds me too much of "HOPE". Both are used by war mongers looking for cannon fodder.

-t

[Stary Hickory]

I was there and it was a ton of people there. I am not a Beck fan by any means I just wanted to see what was going on. It could have been a million, there were areas so packed you could not even find a way to move around.

Near the Washington Monument it started getting more sparse where you could sit down or lay down quite easily with plenty of personal space. 87,000 is a shameful number to report only a complete idiot would report that or someone with an agenda that is not consistent with being truthful.

For sure 300,000 maybe 500,000...maybe more I am no expert but it was a crazy amount of people there, more than I have ever seen in one place. I was epecting 5,000-10,000 people, and this is why I went, my God had I known so many would go I would have stayed home. The metro system was a complete disaster that day.

[Krugerrand]

Lets consider this from another perspective. Beck's viewership fell from 2.9M in Jan to 2.1M in April. Lets call that 3M and 2M respectively.

http://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-glenn-beck-ratings-down-by-30-this-year-2010-4

So we have claims of 1M and 0.5M participants at the most inflated. As a rule of thumb, only 10% of an organizations members will actually do anything - let alone spend hundreds of dollars to get on a bus and travel half way across the country.

Is it realistic to think that if the 1M estimate is correct that 1 in 3 or 1 in 2 of Becks viewers did so?

Is it realistic to think that if the 0.5M estimate is correct that 1 in 6 or 1 in 4 of Becks viewers did so?

In both cases, the answer is clearly no. So if we are going to get above the 0.1M range, where did the others come from?

He did have 50-100 leaders of various religious faiths on the stage, and I'm guessing most were local. It's easy to imagine them putting their congregations on busses and bringing them in. Still, that's not going to amount to that many.

Palin surely has a mailing list, and an e-mail from her could have resulted in the biggest draw.

It was also a pro-military rally, and there is a lot of military in the area.

So what kind of a draw could these other elements provide and who was in the audience? It's looking like the majority were neither Tea Party'rs nor Beck viewers if the attendance got anywhere near 0.5M

One striking characteristic of the crowd was the lack of young faces. That is fairly consistent with the tea party. To rally under the word "HONOR" is somehow disturbing, it reminds me too much of "HOPE". Both are used by war mongers looking for cannon fodder.

-t

I would expect most viewers to not go alone. People take bus trips with their spouses and family members. So 1 viewer could easily translate to 2-4 participants.