Townley Jordan: Women's March on Washington Had 3 Times More People Than Trump's Inauguration

Summary: Crowd scientists say that the crowd at the Women’s March on Washington was about three times the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration. Marcel Altenburg and Keith Still, crowd scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, estimated from photographs of the hour leading up to the inauguration that there were about 160,000 people were at the national mall. Then, they estimated that about 470,000 people showed up to the mall for the women’s march on Washington on Saturday. These were estimated from the limited amount of pictures shown, but did correspond with the estimate of a city official. A Metro official shared that more than a million trips were taken Saturday, the second highest in history, following Obama’s first inauguration. To Trump’s inauguration, 570,000 rail trips were taken. The photographs for the inauguration were more accurate than those for the march, because the inauguration was enclosed in the mall, while the women’s march was more scattered. This means that there very well could have been even more than what was estimated. Trump was infuriated with what he felt to be too low of a crowd count, a falsely accused the media of lying in his first CIA meeting as president. He said, “it looked like a million, a million and a half people,” and that the area “all the way back to the Washington Monument was packed.”“it looked like a million, a million and a half people,” and that the area “all the way back to the Washington Monument was packed.” Later that day, White House Press Secretary, Sean Spencer claimed it to be “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” even though “no one had numbers” to confirm it because the Park Service does not issue crowd estimates. However, the National Park Service said that it firmly believed President Obama’s 2009 turn out to be the largest in history. There is a scientific explanation to why Trump would have thought that the crowd was larger than it was. The crowd scientists said that it would have appeared full because from his position at the podium, Trump would only have been able to see the front third of the crowd, and not the sparse back two thirds.

Analysis: This article was written by Tim Wallace and Alicia Parlapiano for the New York Times. This article was written following the women’s march, and updated on Sunday. Background information that could help to explain the crowd sizes is that Washington is largely democratic, so most of them probably hate Trump and therefore did not attend his inauguration, but were thrilled to attend the march. Also, after watching the Chuck Todd interview with Kellyanne Conway, who literally changed the topic from Chuck’s questions about why they had the Press Secretary lie in his first meeting over something so stupid to pushing their agenda of calling out the media. While also stating that what the secretary said was the provision of “alternate facts”, which from my perspective would be called a lie. All of this I found incredibly infuriating and hope that it is not a foreshadowing of Trump’s entire presidency. However, the fact that so many people showed up to the march is very encouraging and it is comforting to know that there are so many people in this country who will not stand to have any of our progress and rights taken away, and will strive to push them further.

Link: Women's March on Washington Had Three Times More People Than Trump Inauguration