Texas State Reporter: Crowd Estimates for the Women's Marches

I decided to do my analysis on crowd estimates at the Women's Marches because it was the topic of most interest to me over the course of this past memorable weekend.

womensmarch.com, Jan. 22

Business Insider reported on Saturday, the day of the March around 2 p.m., that more people attended the marches than attended President Trump's inauguration. The title of the story is "Aerial photos show the contrast between crowds at Trump’s inauguration and the Women's March" and the story itself features images of the National Mall in Washington D.C., on both Inauguration Day and the Women's March held there one day later using Earthcam. Reporters wrote that organizers used headcounts at the event and metro subway tickets to estimate crowd size at the Washington March, concluding that fewer riders were tallied on Inauguration Day.

Nytimes.com, Jan. 22

On Sunday, news outlets were churning out stories about how difficult it is to get concrete crowd estimates for the marches.

The Atlantic reported Monday that sister marches in 550 of 673 cities and towns in the U.S. that held marches have been compiled for attendance in a spreadsheet by Jeremy Pressman, a professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, using news story crowd estimates from local police and metro counts. An additional 100 cities internationally were also added to this tally. The title of the article is "The Exhausting Work of Tallying America's Largest Protest" is an informational piece about legitimizing crowd counts at the march and future marches.

The most accurate crowd numbers that appear to be currently circulating were compiled by university professors Erica Chenoweth of the University of Denver and Jeremy Pressman of the University of Connecticut. The last update indicated that between 3.2 and 4.7 million people attended Womens Marches in the U.S. and 3.4 and 5 million people globally.