{"id":69759,"date":"2017-01-30T08:10:44","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T13:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=69759"},"modified":"2019-11-22T15:35:30","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T20:35:30","slug":"just-how-big-was-the-2017-womens-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2017\/01\/30\/just-how-big-was-the-2017-womens-march\/","title":{"rendered":"Just How Big Was the 2017 Women&#8217;s March?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2017 Women&#8217;s March was a historic event.\u00a0 Social media alone gave many of us the notion that something happened on an incredibly grand scale.\u00a0 But measuring just how &#8220;grand&#8221; is an inexact science.\u00a0 Women&#8217;s Marches were held around the world in protest of Trump on the day following his inauguration.\u00a0 Subsequently, lots of folks have tried to find good ways of counting the crowds.\u00a0 Photos and videos of the crowds at some of the largest marches are truly awe-inspiring.\u00a0 And the media have gotten stirred up attempting to quantify just how big this march really was.<\/p>\n<p>Think about it.\u00a0 The image below is taken of some of the crowds in Los Angeles.\u00a0 The caption Getty Images associates with the image includes the estimate &#8220;Hundreds of thousands of protesters&#8230;&#8221;\u00a0 But, was it 200,000?\u00a0 Or was it more like 900,000?\u00a0 Do you think you could eyeball it and make an educated guess?\u00a0 We&#8217;d bet you&#8217;d be off by more than you think.\u00a0 Previous research has found, for instance, that march participants and organizers are not always the best source of information for how large a protest was.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re there and you&#8217;re asked how many people were there, you&#8217;re much more likely to exaggerate the number of people who were actually there with you.\u00a0 And that fact has spawned wildly variable estimates for marches around the U.S. and beyond.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 75%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 73.569024% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/632339392?et=7_arVyikSathPXqQDK-BgQ&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=Ph3wWs8Zv2NfE02_vssTzDrQJkFZeWIjmPeXgFjt6Xk=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"437\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>More than one set of estimates exist attempting to figure this out.\u00a0 The estimates that have garnered the most media attention (deservedly) are those produced by <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1xa0iLqYKz8x9Yc_rfhtmSOJQ2EGgeUVjvV4A8LsIaxY\/htmlview?sle=true\">Jeremy Pressman and Erica Chenoweth<\/a>.\u00a0 They collected as many estimates as they could for marches all around the world to try to figure out just how large the protest was on a global scale.\u00a0 Pressman &amp; Chenoweth collected a range of estimates, and in their data set they classify them by source as well as providing the lowest and highest estimates for each of the marches for which they were able to collect data. You can see and interact with those estimates visually below in a map produced by Eric Compas (though some updates were made in the data set after Compas produced the map).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/geographer.carto.com\/viz\/a229d5d2-e04a-11e6-9c98-0e98b61680bf\/embed_map\" width=\"100%\" height=\"520\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>By Pressman &amp; Chenoweth&#8217;s estimates, the total number of marchers in the U.S. was between 3,266,829 and 5,246,321 participants.\u00a0 When they include marches outside the U.S. as well they found that we can add between 266,532 and 357,071 marchers to that number to understand the scale of the protest on an international scale.\u00a0 That is truly extraordinary.\u00a0 But, the range is still gigantic.\u00a0 The difference between their lowest and highest estimate is around 2.1 million people!\u00a0 Might it be possible to figure out which of these estimates are better estimates of crowd size than others?<\/p>\n<p>Nate Silver at <a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/\">FiveThirtyEight.com<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/the-long-march-ahead-for-democrats\/\">tried to figure this out<\/a> in an interesting way.\u00a0 They only attempted to answer this question for U.S. marches alone.\u00a0 And Silver and a collection of his statistical team produced their own data set of U.S. marches.\u00a0 They collected as many crowd estimates as they could for all of the marches held in the U.S.\u00a0 And there are lots of holes in their data that Pressman and Chenoweth filled.\u00a0 March organizers collect information about crowd size and are eager to claim every individual who can be claimed to have been present.\u00a0 But, local officials estimate crowd sizes as well because it helps to give them a sense of what they will need to prepare for and respond to such crowds.\u00a0 As a part of this, some marches had estimates from march organizers, news sources, official estimates, as well as estimates from non-partisan experts (so-called crowd scientists)&#8211;this is especially true of the larger marches.\u00a0 Examining their data, they discovered that for every march in which they had both organizer and official estimates, the organizers&#8217; estimate was 50-70% higher than the officials&#8217; estimates.\u00a0 As Silver wrote: &#8220;Or put another way, the estimates produced by organizers probably exaggerated crowd sizes by 40 percent to 100 percent, depending on the city&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/the-long-march-ahead-for-democrats\/\">here<\/a>).\u00a0 The estimates Silver produced at FiveThirtyEight are mapped below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/tbridges.carto.com\/viz\/e40558c0-e408-11e6-bc02-0e233c30368f\/embed_map\" width=\"100%\" height=\"520\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can interact with the map to see Nate Silver&#8217;s team estimate, but also the various estimates on which that estimate is based.\u00a0 And you may note that the low and high estimates are often the same for Silver and for Pressman &amp; Chenoweth (though not always).\u00a0 Additionally, there were a good number of marches in FiveThirtyEight&#8217;s data set that lacked any estimates at all. And those marches are not visible on the map above.\u00a0 Just to consider some of what is missing, you might note that there are no marches on the map immediately above in Puerto Rico, though Silver&#8217;s data set includes four marches there&#8211;all with no estimates.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, Silver took a further step of offering a &#8220;best guess&#8221; based on patterned differences between types of estimates they found for marches for which they had more than a single source of data (more than one estimate).\u00a0 For instance, where there were only organizers&#8217; estimates, they discounted that estimate by 40%, assuming that it was exaggerated.\u00a0 They discounted news estimates by 20% for similar reasons.\u00a0 Sometimes, non-partisan experts relying on photographs and videos provide estimates were available, which were not discounted (similar to official estimates).<\/p>\n<p>It might be possible then, as Pressman &amp; Chenoweth collected many more estimates, to fine-tune Silver&#8217;s formula and possibly come up with an even more accurate estimate of crowd sizes at marches around the world based on the source of the estimate. It&#8217;s a fascinating puzzle and a really interesting and simple way of considering how to resolve it with a (likely) conservative measure.<\/p>\n<p>By these (likely conservative) estimates, marches in the U.S. alone drew more than 3,000,000 people across hundreds of separate locations across the nation.\u00a0 In the U.S. alone, <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/the-long-march-ahead-for-democrats\/\">FiveThirtyEight estimated<\/a> that 3,234,343 people participated (though, as we said, some marches simply lacked any source of data in the data set they produced).\u00a0 And that number, you might note, is strikingly close to Pressman &amp; Chenoweth&#8217;s low estimate for the U.S. (3,266,829).\u00a0 Even by this conservative estimate, this would qualify the 2017 Women&#8217;s March as certainly among the largest mass protests in U.S. history.\u00a0 It may very well have been the largest mass protest in American history.\u00a0 And in our book, that&#8217;s worth counting.<\/p>\n<p><em>Tara Leigh Tober, PhD is a Lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.\u00a0 She studies the sociology of memory, is writing a book on how the Irish have remembered being neutral during WWII, and is presently engaged in a study on mass shootings in the U.S.\u00a0 You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ToberTara\">Twitter here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><i><a \/>Tristan Bridges, PhD<\/a> is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He is the co-editor of<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/global.oup.com\/ushe\/product\/exploring-masculinities-9780199315673?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;\">Exploring Masculinities: Identity, Inequality, Inequality, and Change<\/a> <i>with C.J. Pascoe and studies gender and sexual identity and inequality.  You can follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tristanbphd\">Twitter here<\/a>. Tristan also blogs regularly at <a href=\"https:\/\/inequalitybyinteriordesign.wordpress.com\/\">Inequality by (Interior) Design<\/a>.<\/i><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 2017 Women&#8217;s March was a historic event.\u00a0 Social media alone gave many of us the notion that something happened on an incredibly grand scale.\u00a0 But measuring just how &#8220;grand&#8221; is an inexact science.\u00a0 Women&#8217;s Marches were held around the world in protest of Trump on the day following his inauguration.\u00a0 Subsequently, lots of folks [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1958,"featured_media":69771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2094,20068,2128,461,304],"class_list":["post-69759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender-politics","tag-politics-election-2016","tag-fascismtotalitarianism","tag-human-rights","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/01\/Womens-March-Map.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69759"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72982,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69759\/revisions\/72982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}