Today’s Chicago Cubs parade and rally has been widely report to be attended by upwards of 5 million people. . . I live in the Chicago Loop not far from where the rally took place and am very familiar with the parade route and have seen all the aerial photos of people, and do not believe for a minute that were were anywhere near 5 million. . .
5 million people is almost every single person in Cook County (~5.2m). . . the Canadian province of British Columbia (~4.4m). . . the urbanized population of metro Houston (~4.9m). . . the entire state of North Carolina (~4.9m). . . the country of Norway (~5.1m). . . the entire population of the Gaza Strip and West Bank (~4.7m). . . so I can only surmise that city of Chicago is living up to it’s Windy City reputation. . .
Can anyone out there convince me that this was even remotely possible?
I don’t believe there is any precise, accurate method for determining the size of a crowd at a public event such as this, especially not when it spreads out over many blocks. You might remember Louis Farrakhan organized the “Million Man March” of black men and was unhappy when the National Park Service estimated the crowd as much less than a million. I think the Park Service stopped estimating crowd sizes after that.
What does “attend” even mean for events spread over a large area? Did anyone notice that every school, business, government office, hospital, house, apartment and vehicle was mysteriously shut down and vacant during the event? If not, I don’t think there are enough people in entire metro area to make a claim anywhere close to that. Single events involving over 1 million people are extremely rare. I think it is safe to say that Chicago didn’t suddenly top that 5 times over.
I am sure it was a very large and impressive event that was well deserved but there is no need to inflate the numbers to the point of absurdity. The city population didn’t suddenly almost double in size in a day and then simultaneously shut down everything else so that every person in the area would attend.
There’s another 3-4 million people in metropolitan Chicago outside Cook County.
And judging from the crowds at my train station this morning, and the kids I saw hanging onto the lamp-posts at the parade, the schoolkids either got the day off or simply took it.
And I added to the parade crowd, though not the rally crowd, even though I attended work and actually got some work done … in the afternoon. I’m sure a lot of downtown office workers took an early-ish lunch for the parade even if they didn’t have time for the rally.
I bet far more than five million people will say they were there for the parade. In fact, five million people may legitimately believe it after a while.
Let’s put it this way, the picture shown in the Fox News story linked in the OP shows a concert sized crowd in the many tens of thousands of people range. Even if you are generous and estimate it at 100 thousand or even double that, that still leaves you about 4.8 million people short. 5 million people is a LOT - as in a metric SHIT TON multiplied by HUGE ASS amount that simply isn’t feasible in the real world especially on such short notice. The demand for bathrooms, food and water would quickly overwhelm the supply and it would cause absolute chaos with a real crowd size even a fraction of the claim.
For example, the entire island of Manhattan, NYC has a population of less than 4 million people even during the workday and it is just about full. You couldn’t orchestrate a 5 million person event even there if you had to because there aren’t enough people. Mardi Gras in New Orleans is a gigantic, multi-week event that covers the whole city and surrounding areas. The crowds are so thick they are dangerous in some places yet they average about 1.4 million in a given year.
Yes, I am calling complete bullshit on this one as well as the claim that Rod Stewart had 3.5 million people at one concert. It isn’t humanly possible.
Then again this is Chicago, where by reputation dead people can still vote multiple times. Given how many Cubs fans lived and died in the 108 year span between championships, that’s a lot of potential added headcount.
There a huge number of ways of ground truthing this. First and foremost, just work out the area involved. What was the route? What was a reasonable range for people to actually see? How much space could be used? How many people could you fit even making people killing assumptions?
Next, how do they get there? And leave? Capacity of roads, capacity of public transport, simple capacity of streets?
It isn’t credible to have more than a few hundred thousand at almost any event.
My guess is that someone either made a typo and added an extra zero or their is a rouge journalist out there that failed 2nd grade and the rest of them didn’t have enough sense to realize that the claim isn’t plausible (the latter is a completely realistic scenario based on other basic errors that get a pass these days).
500,000 people along the entire route is plausible whether it is accurate or not. 5 million is absolutely absurd but what is an extra zero here and there between friends? It would have been even better if they didn’t stop at just one extra digit. I would love to hear about a party that had 50 million or 500 million people in Chicago. That would really rock it.
It’s not a zero. 2010 Blackhawks parade was estimated at 2 mil. 2013 over 2 mil. 2015 also 2 mil. 2005 White Sox was estimated at 1.2 million.
So, it’s not a typo error. Estimates in the millions are normal for these sorts of events. The frickin’ air and water show has crowd estimates in the million plus range.
Now, do I believe that estimate? I’m quite skeptical, to say the least. But it’s not the first scenario.
Chicago math has always been a little…different than everyone else’s. Maybe the city just hired one person that is unusually bad at estimating crowd sizes like the MS Windows guy that designed the process that constantly switched its answer for file download times anywhere from 2 minutes to 8 days. They need to get Rainman on the payroll because something isn’t right.
Good point. I hope the rogue journalist is forced to wear rouge in public once they are caught.
The simple fact is that nobody in Chicago is ever going to beat Ferris Bueller’s parade performance but even he didn’t even hit the half a million mark.
I’m hoping that the CTA (public transit in Chicago) publishes ridership numbers for today. That might at least give an order of magnitude to attendance.
As for those who are asking how that many people could attend one event?
Included in that number are:
people who gathered at Wrigley field to see the team buses off.
people who lined the parade route for about 7 miles, including right through the Chicago business district, in the early afternoon (so those working downtown already)
people gathering at Grant Park (where the picture is from)
