It is already fairly obvious that turnout to Barack Obama’s first inauguration was much higher than that of Donald Trump’s on Friday.
Even if the new administration is ready to go to war against the facts.
But did Trump’s numbers also lose out to those of Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington?
That March has already made history as the biggest inauguration protest march ever. The organizers said that as many as half a million people participated, The Washington Post reports.
But crowd scientists (who knew this was a thing!) interviewed by The New York Times gave their own estimates, saying that the Women’s March on Washington had three times as many people as Trump’s inauguration.
“Marcel Altenburg and Keith Still, crowd scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain, analyzed photographs and video taken of the National Mall and vicinity and estimated that there were about 160,000 people in those areas in the hour leading up to Mr. Trump’s speech Friday,” the report said.
“They estimated that at least 470,000 people were at the women’s march in Washington in the areas on and near the mall at about 2 p.m. Saturday,” it added, noting that the march could have had much more people because it was harder to pin down the sprawling crowd.
The National Park Service does not share crowd data of events, leaving organizers and experts to comes up with their own numbers. Because there is no definite authority on this information, the numbers have now become the biggest topic of conversation for the last two days.
Trump was clearly upset with the media’s reporting. He used his speech at the CIA, and a press briefing by his press secretary Sean Spicer to excoriate the media for their apparent false reporting. Trump’s own numbers were wrong.
Incase we need more proof, WMATA, D.C.’s metropolitan area transit, said metro ridership was at 275,000 as of 11 a.m Saturday for the Women’s March, Politico reports. In comparison, 193,000 rides were taken at same time Friday for Trump’s inauguration.
And at Obama’s 2009 inauguration? There were 513,000 rides by 11 a.m. that day.
The numbers don’t lie.