More misinformation about Tea Party crowd estimates

[babylonsister]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201003280003

More misinformation about Tea Party crowd estimates

March 28, 2010 11:44 am ET by Eric Boehlert


Every time they hold an event, the right-wing media just make stuff up. Every. Time. It's almost like they're desperately trying to make the movement into something it's not.

The latest pratfall came courtesy of Newsbutsers, which proudly pointed to the 20,000 crowd estimate Politico published for Saturday's Tea Party event in Searchlight, NV., featuring Sarah Palin, and wondered why other media outlets didn't follow suit:

Politico's Kenneth Vogel had a little higher number, saying "an estimated 20,000 tea partiers gathered for a rally in a windswept desert lot," in his March 27 report on the event.

Well, that seems legit. If Politico confirmed that 20,000 people showed up, other news outlets should do the same, right? But when you click on the Politico article, you see that the text reads a bit differently {emphasis added}:

“When we talk about fighting for our country, let’s clear the air right now about what it is that we’re talking about,” she told a crowd estimated by organizers at 20,000 gathered for a rally in a windswept desert lot about four miles north of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s tiny hometown.

Turns out Politico didn't confirm the crowd size, it simply passed along the estimate provided by organizers.

So how many people actually showed up at the Nevada event? Less than half that estimate. From the Las Vega Sun:

About 8,000 people were at the event as of 2 p.m., according to an estimate from Metro Police spokesman Jay Rivera. Traffic at one time was backed up about five miles from Searchlight.

UPDATED: This right-wing sleight of hand was rampant on the blogosphere, with scores of sites pointing to Politico and claiming it had independently confirmed the 20,000 number, without noting that all Politico did was pass along the organizers' (overly generous) estimates. See here, and here.

UPDATED: So much for the "Conservative Woodstock," which was how the Nevada event was being touted.

Woodstock's approximate attendance: 500,000.

Searchlight's approximate attendance: 8,000.

UPDATED: Imagine if, during the height of the anti-war movement in the winter of 2003, Al Gore announced he was going to appear at the "Liberal Woodstock," and then just 8,000 people showed up. How do you think the Beltway chattering class would have portrayed that event, as well as the movement Gore was trying to lead?

[Subdivisions]

1. Well, that's 8,000 more than our movement had. Oh...wait... n/t

[KittyWampus]

2. I'm actually kind of shocked as many as 8000 old, bitter white people probably suffering from

hemorrhoids could stand to travel that far to meet in one place.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. They got fuck all else to do.

[Ysabel]

4. even the 8000 number is WAY too high...

i counted approx. 80 vehicles (from a pic which was shot from the air above)...

- there is absolutely no way 8000 people can fit in 80 some vehicles...

p.s. besides look at the pic of the crowd on the ground (it looks about like 300 people) count from the sides the number of people in a row and multiply that by each row to get a close count...

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

5. you can get a lot of clowns in a car

[Ysabel]

7. lol...

[HooptieWagon]

13. Agreed, the helicopter shot only showed a few hundred. n/t

[patrice]

6. How many people did it take to pack the streets surrounding the White House quadrangle from

curb to curb and have the beginning of the march meet the "end" of the march with busloads of more people continuing to arrive?

That was the Fall of 2002, the first of 6 such events that I witnessed in D.C & New York City.

[ChicagoSuz219]

8. I'm sure most were out-of-towners...

...& aren't able to vote for, or against, Harry.

As for the McCain rally... it should be interesting to see how many show up at his NEXT event.

Ouch!

[lame54]

9. They actually arrived by those casino buses that take the elderly to the slots...

Dick Armey just put up a bunch of detour signs

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

10. may as well use a familiar mode of transportation

most look like the same clientele

[Cha]

11. Those teabagged fuckers couldn't hold

a candle to Woodstock I don't care what their freakin' numbers were.

The corporatemediawhores over estimate teabaggers and under reports War protesters.

[anigbrowl]

12. Organizers of political events always overstate the attendance

And police routinely downplay the size - partly in order to justify the minimum number of officers required to be paid by organizers when a permit is applied for. Policing any large public thing like that is usually an easy gig and can net a nice overtime payment, so police quite like the job; if they go with the large estimate, then future events will say 'surely we only need X police officers for our event because (Last Public Event) had Y,000 attendees and only required Z police to maintain order'. I have this from both city permit officials and friends in the police force, take it or leave it as you see fit.

I usually just split the difference between estimates and round down a bit, so in this case I'm guessing 12k or so.