First of all, the people to ask about how many people were there are the guys who empty the port-a-johns. Conservative or liberal, black or white, Democrat or Republican, it all comes out the same.
Since their revenue is based on number of units, but at least part of their costs are based on volume, it’s in their interest to try to match the number of units to the size of the crowd. If they fill a few units to overflowing they make less profit than if they have a whole bunch of units half-full.
If the organizers planned for 50,000, these guys will know by how much that number was exceeded, and likely how many people were in each of the areas occupied by the various groups being discussed.
Secondly, the numbers reported for ridership on the public transportation networks are likely carp for this study. IN order to demonstrate their relevance, they have every incentive to make their ridership numbers look as high as possible. Therefore they often consider a rider to be each time a person enters a vehicle. This means that a person who goes to work and back home on a bus and transfers once can be counted as up to 20 riders in a week. this is further complicated here if anyone happened to take a bus to a Metro station; here they would be counted in both sets.
