As usual, Nate Silver rides in to save the day and provide some much needed context and criticism of the various figures being banded about for yesterday's Tea-Party Protest in Washington. I've been waiting desperately for a post of this sort to get published, largely because a) he's dead right that 2,000,000 was an absurd, city-destroying figure and b) crowd size estimates are simultaneously the most effective and the most bullshit metrics protesters will draw upon to support themselves. They are, simply put, very difficult to gather accurately, and as Silver notes, very easy to manipulate. The combination of these two qualities creates a situation in which over-estimates can be quickly accepted and then reinforced within the media environment - the 2 million figure, for example, was originally spread by FreedomWorks, falsely attributing it to ABC News, wound up in a report by the Daily Mail, and then circled back again to the blogosphere, using the Daily Mail as the source of the number.
The really interesting thing about this particular numbers game was the degree to which the figure expanded - thirtyfold, from ~70,000 to 2,000,000 - and how quickly. It really is a catastrophically, embarrassingly high overreach, the kind that shows either how desperate conservative organizers were to make a splash or how deep into their own kool-aid they've gotten. I hope against hope that it injects a little skepticism into media coverage of protests in the future.
Posts
Wouldn't a much more effective pun be "... and the white house has an African lyin'"?
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think both puns are equally clever. Now you're just trying to steal this poor poet's thunder, Sol.
ReplyDeleteI think it's pretty obvious that 2 million is an absurd figure. And personally, I'm hoping that the number is as small as possible only for the reason that it would make me feel better seeing these people embarrassed.
On the other hand, I'm wondering what it would mean if their 2 million statistic turned out to be right. Would more people be swayed by their arguments? Would Obama suddenly be more of a Kenyan Marxist?
I suppose for the historical or political record, it's important that we get a reasonably good approximation. But regardless of how many people showed up to this thing, their arguments still make the same amount of sense.
If you knew your math and American history, Ben, a 2,000,000 man march is twice as much as a 1,000,000 man march, which means that right-wing extremists have a cause twice as just as black people's.
ReplyDeleteActually I was just reading on the comment thread of the redstate article Dave linked to that the Million Man March only had 200,000 show up anyway. And I'm pretty sure something like 70% of them were estimated to be there for the free chitlins.
ReplyDelete