Glenn Beck "Restoring Honor" Rally Crowd Estimate Explained

As part of our coverage of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally Saturday, CBS News commissioned the company AirPhotosLive.com to offer an independent estimate of how many people showed up for the event. AirPhotosLive.com calculated that there were approximately 87,000 people there, plus or minus 9,000 people. It was the only scientific estimate made of the number of people at the rally.

The estimate generated criticism from conservative bloggers as well as from Beck himself, who suggested the rally attracted at least 500,000 people.

"The media can diminish the crowd side all they want, but the images speak for themselves," Beck said on his Fox News show Monday.

In order to bring more clarity to the crowd estimation process, Hotsheet asked Curt Westergard, the president of AirPhotosLive.com, to discuss his methods. Westergard's company has done aerial imaging for the U.S. border patrol, the Department of Homeland Security, companies building skyscrapers and cell phone companies trying to decide where to build their towers, among others.

"People hire us to get a really detailed view of what's on the ground," he said.

The company sometimes uses these images for crowd estimates, both generating its own estimates and partnering with Professor Stephen Doig of Arizona State University, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and crowd estimate expert, to come up with figures. For President Obama's inauguration last year, the company worked with Doig and GeoEye satellite data to generate a crowd estimate on behalf of CNN that was cited by the Associated Press and other news outlets.

To calculate attendance at the Beck rally, AirPhotosLive.com used what is called a surveillance aerostat balloon to take pictures from both above the event and closer to the ground. In the video above, which was provided by the company, you can see some of the images used to come up with a figure.

The balloon, Westergard said, gave the company the capacity to move up and down, allowing it to photograph people who were standing beneath trees in addition to taking photos from high above.

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"We took a lot of shots under the trees and higher up by just changing the balloon altitude," he said. "So what might have been a negative with an airplane and certainly a negative with a satellite was a very strong position with a balloon."

Though there was restricted airspace on the south side of the reflecting pool, airspace was not restricted where the crowd was gathered, allowing the company to position the balloon in "the very center of the crowd - dead in the middle of it," Westergard said.

The photos were taken at noon, which Beck's representatives suggested would be the peak of the event, which ran from 10 AM to slightly after 1 PM. Taking the pictures then meant counting both those who were late to the event because of subway or traffic delays and those who left early to avoid the crowds afterward.

The company generated its own estimate and asked Doig to separately one on his own. Though Doig and AirPhotosLive.com employ slightly different methodologies, both use a method that involves laying grids over the high-resolution images and counting the density per unit of each grid cell. Westergard provided the image below to help show how the estimates are made. It's of a Tea Party Express event on April 15th that the company calculated attracted 4,436 people.

AirPhotosLive.com

Doig estimated that there were 80,000 people at the "Restoring Honor" rally, while AirPhotosLive.com estimated that there were 87,000 people, a statistically insignificant different since the margin of error was 9,000. CBS News elected to use the higher estimate.

In a blog post, Doig, writing from Portugal, noted that he estimated the crowd at Mr. Obama's inauguration at roughly 800,000 - a number critics assailed as too low.

"Crowd counting, particularly of political events, always is controversial," he wrote. "The organizers of the event inevitably hype their crowd estimate -- often grossly -- to demonstrate the popularity of their cause, and opponents inevitably underestimate to fit their own agenda. Because of the wild pre-inauguration predictions of how many would attend in person -- up to 5 million! -- my reality-based estimate was ignored by many left-wing commentators and embraced by those on the right."

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He added: "The frothing underscores the problem with hyped predictions of crowd size. Organizers and supporters are forced to insist loudly that the actual crowd met or exceeded their expectations, for fear that the realistic estimate will be painted as a disappointment. The time-honored way to dismiss scientific estimates that don't reflect the pre-event hype is to claim political bias on the part of those doing the estimate. I am amused to see that those who embraced my Obama inauguration estimate as soberly realistic are now attacking the Beck rally estimate, produced using exactly the same methods, as deliberately biased."

On his Fox News show, Beck used an Associated Press photo taken from the Washington Monument to support his claim that there were at least 500,000 people at the event. He said that, looking at the photo, it was obvious that a nearly mile-long area was nearly completely filled with people, evidence that the CBS News-commissioned estimate was far too low.

But Westergard said it's a mistake to try to count crowds that way, and noted, as you can see in the video above, that people bunched in front of jumbo-trons and did not tightly fill out the entire area.

"You really have to have a position overhead to count it well, and if you use a very oblique angle from the top of the Washington Monument, the sparse areas - and there were many because of people with blankets and chairs - tend to look more dense because you're looking at it from the edge," he said. "We instead are looking at it from above. And that perspective is essential. Anything less than that is sort of like guessing how many people are in a line by just looking at them through a doorway, for example."

Westergard, who said he has received hundreds of hate mails and angry phone calls over the estimate of the Beck rally, also pointed to this link showing roughly 400 photos the company took at the rally, arranged spatially. Many of these photos were used in generating the two estimates.

Check out two pictures of the Glenn Beck rally below:

AirPhotosLive.com

[Bill01101957]

The reason Beck is correct in his count of 500,000 plus and I was there to confirm this. As he rose above the croud like magic and circled the entire gathering before floating back down and claim he is the new comming of the lord.

I SAW IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Queeque]

So a bunch of people went to see two clowns...Dosn't more people show up to a circus instead of a school board meeting anyway!!! just a thought...

[jaimo62]

CBS is full of it as usual. The location they show past the trees along the reflecting pool barely shows anyone there. Well I was there and that's where I was sitting. Those pictures were taken earlier in the day or after it was over. Trying to get to a port-a-potty in that area was next to impossible. People were stepping over people to get to it. Those pictures were not representative of what was going "during the event" maybe before or after but certainly not during.

[jbensnyder]

They took picture from the other side of the trees as well. They also took pictures throughout the day. This company is actually known for their ability to do crowd estimates over time.

[pilgrimbrent]

The photo showing the methodology with the grid boxes that results in 4300 people shows a problem: The boxes are of equal height, and they should get progressively shorter, the farther away they are, for the density to be equal. That's shown in this photograph of soldiers creating an image of the Statue of Liberty: The number of soldiers in the flame of the torch is twice the number in the rest of the body: http://www.snopes.com/photos/patriotic/liberty.asp

[three20three]

From my understanding of the article, it doesn't look like they are assuming that the density of one box is equal to another box. The grid is overlayed and the density of that box is counted on its own. Perhaps they should have said that they "overlay the grid and count the total number of people in each box" to make it more clear.

[RustyLH]

They can try to explain it all they want to but that is way more than 87,000 +/- 9,000. For perspective, look at any major college football stadium. The field is 120 yards long. That reflecting pool alone is almost 700 yards long. Then there were people on both sides of the trees outside of the pool.

Sorry, but they are flat wrong on the crowd size. I suspect there is bias there. Who is going to admit bias?

[pbh4935]

RustyLH
If you look at the picture there is a lot of green (grass) showing. One rarely sees space in a crowded venue. Check the Obama inauguration photos. There you can get some perspective.
We all know that the TPers like to make false claims and to exaggerate. But try to stick to stuff that is a little less provable.
Cheers.

[Nick_VA]

there were a total of 200,000 more rides on the Metro on 8/28 as opposed to a comparable date the previous year. So at least 100,000 more people rode the Metro throughout the entire day. http://www.wmata.com/rail/disruption_reports/viewPage_update.cfm?ReportID=1919

The previous year it was a mostly cloudy day always threatening rain, locals would not have been out in numbers taking the Metro (a couple hundredths of an inch of rainfall). Beck was granted a bright sunny day which would have brought out more locals who were not attending his rally.

It may have been 90,000 who came exclusively for Beck via Metro (90 in + 90 out = 180 rides) but I doubt it was that many. 200,000 people did not come in on buses or stay overnight within walking distance of the Mall to reach this total of 300,000 some networks are estimating. 300,000 coming in is highly unlikely. I'd put it at a total 80,000-100,000 but that higher number is rather generous.

Don't get me started with 1.5 million people on buses and staying at hotels within walking distance to reach some kind of number Palin came up with because she could see it from her house.

[TerpsFan00]

Whether the attendance was 500,000 or 50,000 that's still a substaintial amount of people who support Beck and doesn't necessarily represent all of his supporterts who are far from the DC area. Even if you have a problem with Beck, at some point you are going to have to acknowledge that he has a legitimate following.

[wlsmith]

Does anyone recall if CBS was so scientific as to use this counting service for the inauguration? Or did they just go with the politically euphoric figures of the day?

[swalt6]

What sewer did you climb out of? And your grasp of the English language is laughabley atrocious. Go back where you came from.

[neogeo1943]

This country has been holding on to pent up HATE and ANGER since the civil war. It has never been truly dealt with and instead the hope has been that it would just go away with time. We now find ourselves in the middle of the perfect storm as far as bringing all that pent up HATE and ANGER out in the open.
1: We are in the middle of two extremely expensive and unpopular and unwinnable wars and have been for several years.
2: we are facing the greatest economic crisis seen by any of us in our lifetimes and it seems to go on forever.
3: Unemployment at all time highs and stagnant wages which seem to go on forever, with no bright spots for either in the foreseeable future.
4: Impotent and ineffective politicians who cannot make up their minds on anything because they are always watching which way the wind is blowing and trying to get re elected at any price.
5: A legislative and a judicial system which have both been bought and paid for and corrupted by big money and big power. Only a blithering idiot would still believe that this is an "Of the people, by the people and for the people" society any more.
6: An increasingly accepted police state at every level of society. Power to the elite and protected.
7: An increasingly rabid, active and vocal right wing which becomes more accepted and tolerated by an increasingly frightened populace.
8: An increasingly cowed and cowering left wing and moderate center, scared to speak out for fear of being branded as socialist. And ain't that a hoot? The average American doesn't even know what the term socialist means any more. We have been so brainwashed by the rabid right to think of it as anti American and hateful. The motto of the right seems to be "Capitalism and More for Me at any cost and the hell with you".
9: The so called epidemic of illegal aliens, even though their numbers are diminishing and the Obama administration has done more to control the borders than all of the previous administration combined. (and how dare that so called governor of Arizona shout out "Do your job Mr. President") when in fact he is doing it, and better than Bush ever did.
10: The fact that for the first time in our history we have a black president. What better target for and excuse for letting out all that pent up HATE and ANGER?.

[pbh4935]

Absolutely correct.

[jaimo62]

Obama has done more to control the borders than any other previous administration is a joke right? Sending a few national guardsmen (just like Bush, Clinton and everyone else has done) to do paperwork in trailer along a fence isn't controlling the border.

But you're probably talking about a sitting President of the United States joining in a lawsuit with the President of a foreign national, i.e. Mexico in sueing Arizona for ACTUALLY doing something about controlling the borders. I see now.

Oh for your information, our President is as much black as he is white, even though it wasn't convenient for him to mention that while trying to gin up the 95% of the nonracist black folk who voted for him.

[jimatmadison]

You mean the GOPers are trying to ramp UP the numbers at the Nincompoop Convention?

I'd think they'd be embarrassed that anybody went.