More People Attend the Tax Rally that Obama's Inauguration?

Did more people show up for the 9/12/09 tea party in DC, than for Obama's inauguration? Well, it's hard to tell, since the numbers vary so widley for both.

The Tea Party:

Police estimate 1.2 million in attendance.

Parks & Rec estimated 1.2 million.

ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. (Wow All Barack Channel, you were a little off).

So let's go with 1.2 million

BHO's innaguration:

A Los Angeles Times article estimates:

“More than 1 million spectators convened on the National Mall to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office Tuesday, but it was unclear if the crowd surpassed the record thought to have been set at Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 inauguration.

"Though early estimates ranged as high as 2 million people, satellite images of Obama’s swearing-in suggested the crowd was probably about half that, said Clark McPhail, who has been analyzing crowds on the National Mall since the 1960s. ‘It was sparser than I thought,’ said McPhail, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Illinois. ‘There were lots of open spaces.’"

An item linked from the Romenesko media newsletter quotes an Arizona State University professor as saying the crowd didn’t even reach a million:

“An ASU journalism professor using satellite images calculated that 800,000 people attended President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony.

“Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication professor Stephen Doig calculated the official inauguration crowd estimate after analyzing a GeoEye-1 satellite image shot at 11:19 a.m. from a height of 423 miles. GeoEye-1 is a military-controlled satellite.

“Doig said the image was taken 40 minutes before Obama’s swearing-in, but adjusted his estimation to include people who were still coming in before the swearing-in.

“‘The space-based image is fascinating because all the low-level shots make you think the crowd is much larger,’ Doig said. ‘You see the very dense clots of people in front of the Jumbotrons but then the wide open spaces elsewhere.’”

So according to satelite images, the crowd was between 800,000 and 1,000,000.

It would appear that there were more protestors than Obamabots.