That's around the amount I estimated from the pictures. It's a very inexact science, counting a gathering on the mall. The article gives varying estimates:
- A journalism professor says he counted 750,000 people in a satellite photo (a journalism professor?)
- The Washington Post's analysis is that 1m people were on the mall (but as Joe and others have made clear, thousands, if not tens of thousands, or more, didn't make it on to the mall).
- A retired asst chief of the US Park Police, who counted crowds back in the day, says 1m to 1.2m.
Then we have this:
"The British defense and security company IHS Jane's announced an estimate of 1.27 million to 1.65 million people, excluding the parade route. That figure, like The Post's, assumed that all 240,000 ticket holders accessed the reserved areas near the Capitol."Well, according to the Washington Post's front page, not everybody made it in, by a long shot, so why assume that?
Then there's the DC Police estimate, which puts the crowd at 1.8m.
According to a security official, the D.C. Police Crowd Management Division estimated internally that 1.4 million people were on the Mall at the crowd's peak, another 300,000 to 400,000 on surrounding streets and 72,000 on the parade route.Whatever the number, it was clearly the largest crowd we've had since I've been here almost 25 years. It is impossible to fill the mall, and Obama did it.
