How big will inaugural crowd be? Do the math

[BridgeTheGap]

Almost as soon as Barack Obama was declared the winner of the Nov. 4 election, projections of how many people will huddle on the Capitol Mall to witness his inauguration as the nation’s 44th president started inflating faster than the federal deficit. Would 1 million, 3 million or even 6 million (or one out of every 11 Americans who voted for him) join the throng?

And if you suspect those high-end projections are laughable, wait until you see the post-inaugural arm-wrestling and nay-saying from partisans and pundits over the dimensions of the "official" count.

When it comes to accurately counting crowds, the slogan should be "No, we can't." In reality, estimating the size of crowds at mass public events is much more about public relations than a quest for truth. Whether the crowd is gathering for an anti-war protest, a sports team's victory parade, a golf tournament, a pope's outdoor Mass or the swearing-in of the most powerful man on Earth, organizational reputations and personal egos are ballooned or deflated by public perceptions of whether the crowd is surprisingly large or disappointingly small.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28662672

[babylonsister]

1. Remember when flyovers weren't allowed during protests so the

crowd size couldn't correctly be estimated? I wonder if that will apply next week.