Mark RobisonReno Gazette Journal
Just how big was the crowd at Vice President Kamala Harris Las Vegas rally Saturday?
Her campaign put out a news release Sunday afternoon saying it’d been 12,000.
The Reno Gazette Journal had reported 17,000.
The best current estimate, based on new information from the campaign, is about 15,000 with 4,000 turned away.
Why is presidential campaign rally crowd size important?
Getting a reasonably accurate estimate is important because former President Donald Trump has made crowd size important by often talking about it as a gauge of how successful he and his campaign are.
Trump's presidency started with him insistently claiming his inauguration had more people than Barack Obama's eight years earlier, although side-by-side photos showed he was incorrect.
In a series of posts over the weekend, Trump falsely claimed on Truth Social that a crowd was created using artificial intelligence when Harris stepped off Air Force Two in Michigan.
“There was nobody at the plane,” he wrote.
Videos and numerous photos show a crowd of thousands greeting Harris.
CBS News analyzed the original photo by the Harris campaign that Trump said had been doctored.
“Metadata from the photo analyzed by CBS News showed it was taken on an Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max on Aug. 7 at 6:28 p.m. ET,” the media outlet reported. “A side-by-side comparison of the original photo and the version that appeared on social media showed that the social media version had been brightened and cropped. There were no signs of AI manipulation.”
During a news conference last week, Trump said the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, was bigger than the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.
"I've spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody's spoken to crowds bigger than me," he said.
The National Park Service estimated the MLK event had about 250,000 people, while the U.S. House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 events estimated about 53,000 attended Trump’s speech.
How the RGJ estimated crowd size at Kamala Harris' rally in Las Vegas
A reporter from the Reno Gazette Journal attended the rally for Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, in person.
The estimate was made taking a starting point that Thomas & Mack Center where the event was held — and home to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Runnin’ Rebels basketball team — holds about 19,000 people when set up for a boxing match where there are seats on the floor.
About 2,000 seats were subtracted from this capacity based on two sections that were blocked off, plus an eyeball estimate of vacant seats in the upper reaches of the arena.
The arena felt full — packed even — with the room temperature and humidity rising as more and more people crowded in.
The reporter then double-checked the estimate. By gauging 50 seats across by 20 rows up to get 1,000 people and then counting how many such sections there were, it was estimated that there were about 17 such sections.
Why the Harris-Walz campaign originally reported 12,000 attendees
On Sunday, the Harris-Walz campaign sent out a news release saying there'd been 12,000 attendees in Las Vegas — a figure repeated widely.
A Nevada campaign official told the Reno Gazette Journal on Monday that this number originated from the amount of people who’d signed up through its online event link for free tickets and who’d been tracked entering the arena.
“Staff stopped physically tracking sign-ins for the last hour of the event before we shut the doors,” she said.
Why 15,000 attendees is now used for Harris' Las Vegas rally
Although staff stopped counting people who'd signed up to attend the rally, that didn't mean people stopped entering Thomas & Mack. About 2,500 sign-ups can be processed per hour.
That puts the total at 14,500: 12,000 sign-ups who were tracked plus about 2,500 after tracking stopped.
In addition, there were people affiliated with independent organizations who attended the event and did not go through the campaign’s sign-in process.
Because of all this, the Nevada campaign official said she felt confident that 15,000 people attended.
“There were an additional 4,000 who had to be turned away after local law enforcement made the decision to halt sign-ins,” she added.
The Las Vegas Metro Police Department had estimated about 6,900 attended Trump’s outdoor rally in June.
A Las Vegas Metro public information officer told the RGJ that it did not do a crowd estimate for the Harris rally and suggested that the Clark County Fire Department be contacted.
A Clark County public information officer said the fire department did not do a crowd estimate either, adding, “I would ask the event organizer.”
The event organizer is the Harris-Walz campaign.
While there is no exact number available for the crowd size at the Harris campaign rally in Las Vegas, the Reno Gazette Journal accepts the Harris-Walz campaign as the best available source and has updated its previous reporting to reflect the latest estimate of 15,000.
Mark Robison is the state politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal, with occasional forays into other topics. Email comments to mrobison@rgj.com or comment on Mark’s Greater Reno Facebook page.
