Jon Stewart rally attendance about 215,000; breaks 19-year-old Metro ridership record

Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" drew appoximately 215,000 people, CBS News is estimating. That's almost three times more attendees than the Glenn Beck "Restoring Honor" rally held in Washington D.C. in August.

Although those estimates are unscientific and spotty at best, perhaps a better way to judge the size of crowds on the National Mall is to use a tool that includes turnstyles. And what a better turnstyle than that at the Washington D.C. subway system that helped bring all those people to the Mall?

  According to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 825,437 Metrorail trips were taken Saturday, which broke a 19-year record for ridership. In June 1991, Metro reported a one-day tally of 786,358 trips, many of which involved people heading to the Mall for a huge Desert Storm rally to protest the first Iraq war. In 1997, on the day of the Promise Keepers rally at the Mall, the Metro system counted 725,909 trips.

The average ridership for the D.C. Metro on a Saturday is about 350,000, WMATA said in a statement Sunday. That would mean about 237,000 additional riders made roundtrips Saturday which would jibe with CBS's estimates.

Co-host of the rally, comedian Stephen Colbert, calculated a much different number. "Early estimate of crowd size at Rally: 6 billion," he tweeted Saturday.

-- Tony Pierce

RELATED:
Funniest signs and images from the Jon Stewart / Stephen Colbert rally
Thousands descend on National Mall for Stewart's and Colbert's 'Sanity' rally

Top photo: Thousands participate in the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" on the National Mall in Washington.  Photo: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Second photo: Satirist Stephen Colbert speaks in front of a massive puppet of himself during the rally. Credit: Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images

 

Comments

[Judy B.]

Using the Metro rider numbers is a good start. But neither myself nor my 3 friends rode the Metro to or from the Rally. In fact, we walked along and through the streets with thousands and thousands of other Rally goers. Don't forget to add us to your finally Rally total!

[j. russell]

I don't normealy post comments , but you ares so far off I have to. I watched both rally's and Al Sharptons also and no body touched near the amount of people at the Beck rally You people get me I never realized how bais are Media was . And I"am a independent voter and not a teaparty person

[Whats Next]

What a lie. Rally was about 100K at best.

[Jessica]

Huh. You SPELL like a "teaparty person." Just sayin.

[Ann]

A crowd size estimate commissioned by CBS News and carried out by AirPhotosLive.com estimated the crowd at 215,000 people.
CBS is not a reliable news source.

[Silverlake Mike]

Sorry, Baggers. There are more of us than you. We took your country and you can't have it back. Go back to skulking in the shadows.

[Mugatu]

CBS didn't make the estimates, they used a 3rd party airphotolive, because of so much complaining they listed the companies resume and detailed how they came to that number in a step by step simple presentation. They also work for Homeland Security and border patrol, why do people claim Beck had 300k and Stewart had so few without any kind of facts.

If Beck FOX or all the other conservatives making claims why not use a 3rd party to dispute these numbers? Beck gave $10k to the GOP why cant he spend $5k to show his followers he was speaking the truth? If Stewart had 50k and Beck had 300k I still had fun but, I hate such purposeful distortion of facts

[Peg]

So, Beck fans don't want to believe CBS, don't want to believe rally goers, don't want to believe the train and bus companies who woefully underestimated rally goers by the tens of thousands, don't want to believe airphotolive, don't want to believe metro transit.
They will however, believe one picture that was photo-shopped and put up on tea party website and say anyone who doesn't believe it is a socialist-marxist-nazi on welfare.

[Mike D.]

Actually, AirPhotosLive was commissioned for the Beck rally as well and they had the same step-by-step detail for that estimate back in August. The count: 87,000. All the "distortion" of numbers is on the Fox side with them re-using footage of other rallies and carefully chosen camera angles to give them impression of a much larger event.

[Fairfax Voter]

Epic fail, Los Angeles Times...

The 1991 Desert Storm rally was a victory rally! It was not a protest. It was welcoming the victorious troops home! This isn't a one-person blog, it's the Los Angeles Times. PLEASE do some fact checking next time.

Or, ask somebody who was alive then whether there was a huge, record-breaking hostility to Desert Storm that could possibly have generated such a vast anti-war rally on that date as you have just made up. Hint: no.

[Mike J]

How predictable. Tea party members don't believe facts, even from multiple sources. Did god tell them? Was it a flock of geese?

[MrMojo]

actually Peg, why don't we just wait till Wednesday morning and you'll see for yourself what we believe.

[Sharron]

Grew up in the 60's,70's. I thought it was just me that thought we all had lost our bloody minds. It was so good to watch Stewart and Colbert; especially the "FEAR" montage. I don't give a darn if some people thought it was "preachy" or liberal leaning, I'm sick of the division. I have cancer and I also have a brain injury my insight on things changed drastically. If the house and senate change hands so be it. We will survive and if we don't, then we just don't. I'm sick of the hate. Thank you Stewart Colbert.

[JohnF]

So .. more people come to a comedy show than an honor rally.

What a sorry state this country is in when people are so enamored by the clowns named Stewart and Colbert and their sarcasm and parody.

[Spellcheck pls!]

@J.Russel,
Please tell me you're 10 and at Daddy's computer. Because I really hate to think that an eligible voter wrote your post.

This thing has spell check for god's sake! The little red wavy line under your comments means that you're spelling it wrong.

And you need to get a copy of Strunk and White... borrow one if you have to. Wow. Stick to not commenting. You're really making it more difficult for the rest of us independent voters.

[Zeke440]

SO WHAT ? does any of this mean anything ?

What will the Polls Tell us Tuesday evening...

[Ben Dover]

I could care less how many people were at either. I just cant wait until this Wednesday when the face of Washington will change once again. Lets see how you clowns spin that. L O L !!

[Andrew Harper]

I guess we'll see tomorrow, huh?

[Tjexcite]

The metro was high because it was all people from the greater Washington area. Those who came across the country by bus just drove to the mall. and no need to take the local metro. Hence not a reliable estimate. If 10-30 was at the reflection pool there will be a better comparison but as it was closer to the capital there may never be a true measure but 8-28 was just bigger by many factors and no photo trick excuse will prove other wise.

Well at least they beat 10-2-10. That was put on by 300 progressive unions.

[Chatom]

The Park Service told Beck themselves that the Reflecting Pool holds 250,000 which was packed on 8/28 plus he had both fields on either side packed and the crowd went almost all the way back to the Washington Monument. The Smithsonian told Beck he broke the record for the most people EVER to be in that spot. He didn't make up the numbers, he was told what the area holds. You libs keep saying we are the haters but you are the ones that HATE Beck, HATE FOX, HATE Palin for absolutely no reason. Is there something wrong with wanting your country to follow the CONSTITUTION.

[MrsTime]

What amazes me is how many people are against what Jon Stewart said. If this is the road America is taking it is no doubt that we are in big trouble. What is wrong with working together? Making concessions on both sides of the aisle? What is wrong with being civil?

Our forefathers are rolling over in their graves.

[dk]

These tea baggers insisting that they had a better turnout is like a bunch of little kids plugging their ears and yelling "LALLALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU".

Not to mention the irony of dismissing Colbert and Stewart as clowns while worshiping the clown Gospel of Beck daily. If you can't see the irony of that, then you simply cannot be helped.

[handsome]

I can't wait for the day that Beck turns to you all and says he played you for the money. I'll watch fox news, but not Beck. What a manipulative shill. If he really believes what he's preaching, it's because he doesn't speak or debate anyone with a differance of opinion. He's just modified his morning zoo shtick and you've all become fanatics, just the way a Howard Stern fan loves the crap on that program. He'll laugh at you, and when he does, I hope you have enough of a sense of humor to take being the butt of a joke.

[wwilliam50]

We were there. The pictures doesn't show the large crowd that extended to the right and left of the mall, across the street and up on the steps of buildings facing the mall.

[Jen]

Well, I would love to see the metro numbers for the Glenn Beck rally, if they are so accurate. Oh wait, that's right, there were so many of us at line down the streets at the metro stations that they opened the gates and let everyone through without paying. Doesn't sound like that was a problem at this rally.

[Jeff]

@chatom- "He didn't make up the numbers, he was told what the area holds". I think this is where the discrepancy is coming from. If you try to estimate the size of the crowd by how much ground they covered, you're going to get the wrong answer unless you also know the crowd density (i.e. the average number of people per square foot). The pictures of the Beck rally I've seen show people sitting in neat rows of lawn chairs with room to walk between rows (i.e. a low crowd density). At least where I was standing in the sanity rally, it was standing room only with no room to do more than scratch your noise (i.e. high crowd density). Ask anyone who has ever ridden a subway and they will tell you that you can pack a lot more people into the same train car if they're standing than if they're sitting. The aerial photos took crowd density into account so this should be the most accurate way of estimating the crowd size. But the most important factor is that both rallies got a large number of people to show up on the national mall so it wouldn't be true to say either rally drew only the lunatic fringe. Glen Beck has a lot of followers. And the message that politics is too nasty and divisive also rang true to a whole lot of people.

[person]

That comment about spelling as a Teaparty supporter would spell is hysterical…and oh so true. When they become all fired up and angry their spelling gets even worse. And damn those leftist turnstyles for working the numbers.

[jball]

Typical liberals, all you do is make fun of conservatives. "Omg, I bet you're 10 years old, learn to type" yada yada

Americans are truly blind.

Election Day was a HUGE wake up call for the Left. They don't do anything but spend this country into oblivion.

Name 1 good thing that has come out of the Obama presidency? Health Care? Lmao