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Trump Mocks Harris’s ‘Tiny Crowds’—Is Her Campaign in Trouble?
Trump Mocks Harris’s ‘Tiny Crowds’—Is Her Campaign in Trouble?. The sizable support Vice President Kamala Harris has generated at her rallies has rattled former President Donald J. Trump, who has emphasized, and frequently exaggerated, his crowd sizes for years. He has said, often repeating falsehoods, that his crowds are much larger than Ms. Harris’s, and the Harris campaign has returned with their own jabs about the enthusiasm of Trump rallygoers.
We attended six rallies — every campaign event that the candidates held within a three-week period in August — across six states, taking photographs and capturing video and 360-degree footage, to analyze which claims on crowd sizes hold weight. The analysis found that, despite Mr. Trump’s claims, both candidates draw comparably big audiences.
Mr. Trump gathered 11,500 spectators to the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona on a Friday night.
Ms. Harris attracted 12,800 supporters to a campaign rally held at Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Fiserv Forum on a Tuesday night. This is a scene from the protest:
The Times saw four more campaign events, all of which were similarly crowded, with attendees mostly filling the event area. The maximum capacity of the locations used for the rallies ranged from 6,800 to 19,300 people; however, in certain instances, extra seating or standing-only areas were added and sections of the seating were blocked off.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images (Las Vegas), Christian Monterrosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (Savannah), Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images (Bozeman), Doug Mills/The New York Times (Wilkes-Barre)
The Times calculated the number of individuals visible in video shot immediately following each candidate’s address for each of the six events, taking into consideration those in poorly lit or concealed regions. This figure does not account for individuals who might have come late, departed early, or before the video was recorded.
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According to experts, the number of people in attendance at rallies has no bearing on whether an election is won or lost. One strategy used by event planners is to deliberately select locations with limited capacity, such as buildings on college campuses, where only a few hundred people can fit. The number of individuals in the crowd and when they choose to arrive or depart can also be influenced by the day of the week and time of day.
Crowd size estimates at campaign events – The New York Times
Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has always been sensitive about crowd sizes; lately, however, his obsession has grown as excitement for the new Democratic ticket has skyrocketed. Falsely, Mr. Trump asserted that crowd photos from Ms. Harris’s appearances were altered with artificial intelligence.
The Harris team retaliated by releasing a video montage of scenes from Mr. Trump’s rallies showing audience members dozing off. They also claimed in a different Truth Social post that some of Mr. Trump’s supporters departed the Pennsylvania event early, “leaving even more empty seats.”
The Times discovered that attendees at two of Mr. Trump’s three gatherings did depart early, even during his speech.
Images captured at Mr. Trump’s rallies reveal where attendees departed from their seats. Here are some pictures from his rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on August 17, shot at 13 minutes and little over an hour into his address.
There may have been more early exits from a Trump rally due to its longer duration than a Harris event. Opening remarks at Trump rallies tended to start sooner and run longer, and attendees tended to arrive earlier in the day. Mr. Trump spoke four times longer than Ms. Harris did at each of the six events The Times visited.
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Even while there isn’t much of a link between crowd size and election results, the intense public backlash between the two camps over the measure suggests that it at least has some political weight.
Huge, fervent audiences can also help candidates feel more energized during their speech, according to Todd Belt, the head of George Washington University’s Political Management program. Additionally, it can reinforce the “bandwagon effect,” demonstrating to people who aren’t present in person that a candidate’s passion is genuine.
Attendee Betsy Reiser, 62, said of Harris rallies in Savannah, Georgia, “Even though I do believe these kinds of events don’t change people’s minds, what it does is it makes people feel like you’re not alone.” “It is very important to feel like you belong.”
Methodology:
From the moment the doors opened until the completion of the activities, The Times captured panoramic photos at 15-minute intervals and 360-degree photos every two minutes at the rallies. The Times manually counted people in a single panoramic photo just before or during the candidate’s speech, when the crowd density was predicted to be at its peak, in order to determine the approximate size of the crowd. After that, the count was rounded to the closest hundred.
When necessary, areas that were out of our cameras’ field of vision were integrated with the primary count after being photographed and examined independently. A single composite image that displays a 360-degree view of the arena was created by combining several photos. Speaking time was calculated using photo timestamps that were compared to official campaign data and broadcast recordings.
