In my travels around the blogosphere today, I’ve seen some left-wing commenters pooh-poohing what they consider to be a “meager” turnout for today’s Tax Day Tea Parties.
So I decided to spitball some numbers.
Michelle Malkin reports that there are at least 800 tea parties going on today. This post, which is aggregating reports from around the country, has a variety of numbers from 100 to thousands.
So let’s take a good conservative number and say that each event had an average of 500 people show up. I think that’s a bit low, as most events, from what I’ve seen, have been drawing So how many people is that, total, for the whole country?
400,000
That’s four hundred thousand people for an event that had no central organization, no single charismatic leader around which to rally, no giant publicity machine, no great MSM buzz, and no deep-pocketed benefactor.
That’s only an estimate, of course, but it’s not unreasonably. My own guess is that the real number, buoyed by the bigger cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta, will be higher — somewhere around 600,000.
And that, by any measure, is pretty darned impressive.
Are you listening, Republicans? This is your wake-up call. Get right or get gone.
UPDATE: GayPatriot says 10,000 in Atlanta, according to the police there. That may well be the highest total, as it had the largest number of celebrities attending also.
Then again, perhaps not. The Denver Post is reporting 5,000 there with similar totals in Sacramento, San Antonio, Harrisburg, Olympia, Cleveland, and Oklahoma City.
Perhaps an average of 1,000 with a total estimate of 800,000 isn’t out of the question.
Tags: Big Government, Conservatives, Michelle Malkin, Taxes
I was a part of about 500 at a tea party in Thousand Oaks, Ca. and it was great. Obama and the media (except Fox News) are so downplaying this entire day, and of course with the millions of teabags that were sent to the White House, we have not heard one word about that. And the average liberal does not want to believe that the media is bias. YOU THINK????
It’s insane and these idiots that are the head of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN news are still scatching their heads trying to figure out why they cannot match the popularity of FOx News. Obama thinks he’s King and that this will blow over, he’s CRAZY!!!1 People are angry, tired of Big government, tired of We the people not being listened too. And the sad part is that many that were caught up in the Obama craze are asking themselves…What in the hell was I thinking??? Inform yourself AMerica, for your Country depends upon it. Don’t vote unless you know what in the hell your voting for, wwho they are and what they stand for, and their background that is more than a bunch of hype.
and we still don’t have the birth certificate of Obama. There is and has been too much that is questionable about him. And yes he is scarey.
I was one of the many photographers at the Tucson event and I can tell you there were at least 2000, but my guess is closer to 3k. I will be making a better estimate when I go over the days’ take. It was very peaceful, very powerful. The most striking vision (in my opinion) was the absolute variety of people in attendance. There were young & old, all races, all political parties (mostly leaning Libertarian/right but indeed there were some Democrats present). I think anyone who ignores the meaning of this spontaneous rally does so at their own peril.
Less than 50k are the most generous estimates. A joke and a failure. The G20 protest got 20k IN ONE CITY.
How do you arrive at your estimate? There are more than 25K confirmed by local media reports in just a few of the hundreds of cities. I”m assuming you can count and do basic math, but perhaps I shouldn’t.
8,000 – 10,000 at the St Louis, Missouri Tea Party. Very well mannered participants, and cut across all walks of life and political parties. Very non-partisan – the biggest cheers were heard when the speakers said “this is not about party..” Lots of dissapointment and anger about Congressional actions in Wash DC saddling every US citizen with a huge debt, without our consent, and then basically dismissing the voice and will of the people as being “non relevant”. The people feel that Congress has its own plan and agenda, regardless of what the people want or the financial burden that is being placed on the people today and on their children and grand children.
There were over 1000+ in Albuquerque NM and the event was never mentioned anywhere on the local news until it happened. Somehow, a thousand people managed to find each other.
It’s a grassroots movement with, as mentioned, no real national coordination, darn little press coverage except for Fox, yet it somehow managed to get substantial numbers on the street.
As for the 50,000, Texas alone had more than that in just San Antonio and Houston.
G20 was professional protestors. Tea Parties are true grass roots.
Portland, OR estimate is 5,000 and some Portland suburbs held their own protests.
The count from 65 cities is over 180,000 now- certainly to rise as all 400? 800? 1000? protests are totaled.
I wonder if hindsight will determine April 15th, 2009 to be the beginning of the end of the politicians who tried to enslave us to socialism?
Over 20,000 at Atlanta… here’s the first pictures. I’ll have more later!
I was a part of the Charleston, SC TEA Party that was 4,000 strong. Tally ‘em up!!!
I was in downtown Boise where police estimated 2,500. That’s a significant number for Boise. and it was cold and rainy!
Is anyone compiling total numbers?
I drove 500 miles round trip yesterday and attended three Tea Parties. Statehouse grounds in Columbia, South Carolina we had over 10,000 to hear Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. Jim DeMint speak. Across town four hours later, the Fair Tax folks had a different rally (mostly different people, about 3,500 of them) and listened to Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity and Neil Boortz.
Finally, I drove down to Charleston for another big outdoor rally in front of the old historic Customs House drew at least another 3,500.
These folks were from all age groups, races and all walks of life. They are, in the words of the late Howard Jarvis “mad as hell and not going to take it any more!”
The Obamunists will continue to loot the carcass of the republic for another twenty months but there is a Republican tsunami coming!
Hey TO! I was at the County Courthouse in Ventura. Estimate given was 2000 there. I thought that was a bit high, but I have no experience in crowd counting. Adding to the problem of estimation, the crowd was divided into two groups – one group that was centered aroung a speaker’s stand, and a large number of people on the sidewalk who were very active in interacting with the passing cars. The honking by the passing cars was amazing. There’s been a first Friday of the month demonstration on that corner with about 20 demonstrators holding “Get out of Iraq” signs for the last couple of years (They stopped when Obama was elected), and virtually no “Honk if you agree” response. In Ventura yesterday, the cars slowed, honked, there was actually a traffic jam and the sound was amazing! Terrific support! The gathering was held in the middle of the day, so many were working – but it sounded to me like they were with us in spirit!
Oklahoma City estimates 4k but I learned the Tulsa crowd was nearly as large 3/3.5k. Muskogee, Norman, Lawton, Enid, Poteau, Idabel, Weatherford, and numerous other small towns are reporting between 200-1.5k each. I would be shocked if Oklahoma had fewer than 12k total turn out for the state.
I’m an Architect who attended the Houston Tea Party. The venue was in Jones Plaza that took up the whole block. There is a simple calculation that one can do to estimate how many people were at each event. In Houston the plaza was anywhere between 23,000 sf to 30,000 sf (150′ to 175′ square times itself). An assembly area with standing room only is allowed 5 sf per person to determine max occupancy. Because I was on the terrace of the Plaza I could see everyone inside and outside the venue, and people were shoulder to shoulder inside and outside the plaza. Having done the math in my head, the figure Between the hours of 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm when i attended was anywhere between 4500 and 6000 people. This is not including the 1000 to 2000 people outside on the sidewalk, 10 feet deep around the entire plaza that was not allowed inside due to the police shutting down the entrances because there were too many people inside the plaza. The policeman I spoke with said they shut the plaza entrances when the population reached 5,000!! So as people left, more people came in. There were sign up sheets that asked for Name, number in party, email addresses and phone numbers. 8532 people signed these sheets. I’m guessing about 2000 people did not sign the sheets as they thought it was ACORN or were suspicious or just wanted to be anonymous. i left at 7:00 and as many people who were leaving were being replaced with just as many coming in. It was great! So to calculate the people in your tea party, estimate the area and divide by 5 to get the number of people that were there.
Oh and that is a conservative calc. As packed as Jones Plaza was, and not knowing the exact area, I think the figure was a larger number, maybe 3sf per person. It was like a bunch of sardines in there.
I was at the party in Fresno, CA – Last official count I heard as I left last night was about 7500
In Bishop, CA we had about 30 but the traffic driving by on Main St. was very supportive. We even had positive media coverage by Ch 33.
There were thousands of small communities that also had demonstrations.
There were more like 2000+ tea parties. When you take into consideration that some were well over 10,000 in attendance it is safe to assume an average of 1,000 per event. That would be 2 million people turning out in the middle of the week on a workday. That is phenomenal! Usually if a business receives one letter of complaint they figure that 25000 people feel the same way. Let’s be really conservative and say only 100 people felt like protesting, but stayed home or had to work (to pay their taxes no less). That would be 200 million disgruntled Americans, but really who’s counting anyway? I’d like actual numbers from all 2000+ cities.
There were 8500 confirmed in Houston. That is just people who signed in. Many did not because the firemarshal had to close Jones Plaza because no one else could safely fit so thousands were on the sidewalks and other areas surrounding Jones Plaza. In San Antonio there were over 15,000.
In my hometown of Gadsden, AL 30 people showed up — population is 60K. Newberg, OR reports “less than a hundred” — population 20,000. Sorry, your formula doesn’t hold water.
Okay, so 30 in Gadsden. And 15,000 in Atlanta. How many Gadsdens does it take to get to an average of 500 from there?
San Antonio had about 15,000 also. How many Gadsdens?
Houston had over 7,000. Denver about 5,000. Same question.
It’s okay to use a calculator.
Seriously, the math here isn’t difficult. If it were, I couldn’t do it. You do have to let go of the talking points long enough to do it, though.
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