Counting people

Reporters are often called upon to estimate the size of a crowd at a given event — a protest, a political meeting, a sports event. The estimates of crowd size can be an important part of a story. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's rally in London, Ont. yesterday is a case in point.

The most important descriptive for that particular event was that the crowd was huge — much bigger than anything any reporter on any campaign as seen so far in this election. We took the “hugeness” of the crowd to be an anecdotal indicator of the “intensity” of support for, in this case, a political party.

While pollsters can only really measure voting intentions, big and boisterous crowds might suggest that a party has support beyond that given on polling day. For example, a fired-up group of Conservative supporters may be more inclined to drive someone to the polls on polling day or do some of the hundreds of little things that can make a difference when a local race comes down to a few hundred votes. Rallies where no one is showing up might indicate that, while there is voter support in a given region, it is soft or apathetic.

Opponents of different policy positions often use duelling rallies as a way to “prove” who is right and who is wrong. We saw this last spring over the same-sex marriage issue. Those opposed to the bill held a rally on Parliament Hill within a few days, if I recall, of those in favour of the bill. One rally was much bigger than the other and its organizers used that fact to press their case to the politicians. And if the size of a rally is going to sway a politician, it's important for reporters covering that issue to have an accurate count of different crowd sizes.

But back to the Harper rally.

It was huge but the precise estimate was not as crucial as it might be for duelling political rallies on the same policy issue. Still, should it become important, we all wanted an accurate count.

Today, reviewing the press accounts, I note that The Canadian Press reporter Murray Brewster estimated the crowd size at 2,000. Robert Benzie, the Toronto Star's reporter with Harper this week, said there 1,000 people at the rally in his story on Harper's day.

On CTV Newsnet, yesterday, I reported to our viewers that my estimate was between 1,200 and 1,500 people but I also noted that campaign organizers estimated the crowd at 1,700. Just as the event was getting underway, I blogged that there were about 1,200 people in attendance.

So how do we arrive at these numbers?

Well, first of all, there is no substitute for a reporter actually doing the counting yourself, even if there are official organizers or ticket-takers or others who provide an estimate to reporters.

So, as soon as we arrived, several reporters had a quick chat about the crowd size. This is a standard sort of thing to see if there is a consensus among reporters. There really wasn't much of a consensus so we each started doing head counts. I counted 500 chairs. They were all quickly filled. Then organizers brough in some more chairs. They were not in easy-to-count rows but I figured that a little more than 100 new chairs were brought in. An organizer told me that 200 chairs were brought in but, by this point, with the hall quickly filling with a standing-room only crowd, I could not verify this with my own count.

So now, at this point, I'm very confident that I have accurately counted 600 people. But the standing-room crowd was huge and those kind of crowds, because they are constantly moving clumps of large numbers of people, are much more difficult to count accurately. Still, we try to count as best we can. By the time the event started, then, I felt that a count of 1,200 was reasonably accurate, probably to within a 100 people.

But many more people arrived at the event after it started and it was clear by the time the event finished there were more people in the room. I tried a quick re-count again and, as a result, I reported between 1,200 and 1,500.

During the event, a campaign organizer said the campaign staff felt there was 1,700 in the room. So I reported that number but noted that the source for that estimate was a Conservative campaign staffer.

Later, after the event, Harper's press secretary told some reporters, but not me, that there were 2,500 people at the event.

Today, I asked Brewster, the CP reporter, how he arrived at his number and he told me first about the press secretary's estimate but also about an estimate provided to him by the security staff at the event. The security staff estimate was the source for the 2,000 number.

Each news organization has different guidelines for reporting on crowd sizes. I believe it to be a fair method to report on different estimates. The reporter should provide his or her own estimate but will likely find it prudent to report what other authorities believe the crowd size to be. Other authorities might be the police, event organizers or a widely-quoted news organization like The Canadian Press. In this case, I felt it best to provide my own estimate but also one provided to me by campaign organizers and, most important of all, to provide a source for those estimates so that a reader or viewer can then make his or her own assessment of the independence and accuracy of those estimates.

UPDATE: The Western Standard's Kevin Steel muses on crowd sizes during his week with the Liberal campaign.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *