The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza is gobsmacked, apparently.
“This Crowd Shot From Donald Trump’s Massachusetts Rally Is Absolutely Mind-Boggling,” the headline over Cillizza’s The Fix blog post reads (12/5/16), highlighting a photo that Post correspondent Jenna Johnson posted on Twitter:
Thousands and thousands packed into arena in Lowell, MA, for Donald Trump’s rally. pic.twitter.com/OQ3It53lXL
— Jenna Johnson (@wpjenna) January 5, 2016
Cillizza commented:
The building…holds 8,000 people, and local officials were estimating that it was filled to capacity or beyond. That is a MASSIVE amount of people — especially considering that the high temperature in Lowell yesterday was 29 degrees and Trump’s rally didn’t start until the evening.
Before I get to the real point, let me note that 29 degrees in Massachusetts in January is not particularly cold—the average January temperature in Lowell is 24 degrees—and January is generally when the presidential primaries really get going, so the temperature does not really add to the remarkableness of people going to see Donald Trump at an indoor arena.
But the bigger issue is that this “MASSIVE” turnout for Trump a month before the primary is not even half the size of the crowd Bernie Sanders attracted in the same general area three months ago. As the Boston Globe (10/3/15) reported:
Sanders addressed a near-capacity crowd of 20,000 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, with a few thousand more watching a feed of his address while on Lawn on D. Hoping to secure a good spot at the event, people formed a line that stretched a half-mile down Summer Street, nearly reaching South Station two hours before the event began.
And Cillizza knows this, because he wrote about it at the time (10/5/15)—even employing more all-caps excitement (and another odd weather reference):
TWICE AS MANY PEOPLE CAME TO SEE BERNIE SANDERS ON A CHILLY OCTOBER DAY IN 2015 THAN DID THE SAME FOR BARACK OBAMA IN 2007.
The post came complete with an excited tweet:
🍃My goodness…. #bernieinboston pic.twitter.com/TJILt0CZbR
— Cynthia (@cynthia4877) October 4, 2015
The headline of Cillizza’s Sanders crowd piece is: “20,000 People Came to See Bernie Sanders in Boston. Why Aren’t We Talking More About It?” That’s a good question. Like, why aren’t we talking about it when we’re getting excited three months later about Trump drawing 60 percent fewer people?
I guess the answer to that is implicit in a piece Cillizza posted a little more than a week later (10/14/15), headlined “Why Bernie Sanders Isn’t Going to Be President, in Five Words.” The five words, if you’re wondering, are “I am a democratic socialist.” And that makes you ineligible to be president, in Cillizza’s view, since only 3 in 10 people say they have a favorable opinion of socialism and 61 percent express an unfavorable opinion of it.
As it happens, those were almost exactly the favorable/unfavorable numbers for the Republican Party the last time CBS polled about it (10/4-8/15)—32 percent favorable, 59 percent unfavorable—but nobody says that means it’s impossible for a Republican to be elected president.
The beyond-the-pale status of “socialism” does mean, however, that Sanders comes up in relation to Trump’s crowd numbers only as a reason not to get too excited about Trump’s crowd numbers: “After all,” writes Cillizza (1/5/16), “if crowd size at rallies was determinative, Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton, would be the heavy favorite to be the Democratic presidential nominee.”
P.S. To get a sense of how badly Cillizza wants to hype the Trump crowd, check out this second Twitter photo he posted, from the Lowell Sun‘s Rick Sobey:
The line to get in for Trump stretches to the Post Office #TrumpInLowell pic.twitter.com/ndap2g82Ue
— Rick Sobey (@rsobeyLSun) January 4, 2016
Take a close look at that photo. I count maybe 33 people in it. I have no doubt there was a longish line to get into the 8,000-seat arena, but you could take a photo of 33 people standing in line to see John Kasich.
Hmm, Why is fair comparing two events 3 months apart at different venues? Looks to me like Fair isn’t being very “fair” in their coverage and has become just another anti-trump media group.
Boston vs. Lowell? (urban vs. rural/semi-urban) December 29 (i.e. btwn Xmas and NYrday) vs. mid-October? academic hub (Boston is home to how many universities and colleges?) vs. community colleges and one branch campus? etc.
Comparisons require context.
I think he’s more amazed that there were 8000 people in Massachusetts stupid enough to vote for Trump, yet could find their way to his meeting hall
(did he bring the chubby African-American sister act who sing for him and must think he’s the greatest thing since fried chicken?)
I count about 60, although that doesn’t effect your point. Crowd-counting is harder than it seems.
Certainly any major candidate will attract a certain proportion of people who are mainly just interested in experiencing a big campaign event while seeing the candidate for themselves, but I expect Trump pretty much maxes out that effect. Sanders less so.
Oh for crying out loud, Lowell is right outside Boston, it’s hardly rural. It’s a fair comparison.
Bernie Sanders will not become the Democratic candidate unless everyone gets out to vote in the primary. Check your state’s Board of Elections to find the date of your state’s primary. They vary from February to April. Also, you should find out who can vote the Democratic ticket. Some states allow Independents to request the Democratic ticket, but yours may not and you might have to change affiliation to Democrat to vote for him.
What a joke this site is….. Just name it fake news from far left!
Lowell sure is closer to NH than Boston.
Cheaper parking too.
The real point is that many more of those Trump supporters probably came from the north than the Sanders crowd in Oct in Boston.
this site sucks
You might also compare the numbers-which I don’t have, although I was there-of Bernie’s visit to UMass-Amherst on Jan. 2-with a room seating only 1800. There were enough of us outside that Senator Sanders was kind enough to come speak to us first, before going in to the official “audience”. We were not only willing to wait in the cold, but to hear him speak in it also.
DONALD Trump needs to stay out of his tanning bed or spray tan booth because he looked like a wrinkled orange that fell off the tree years ago. He looks like a fool. Walk like a duck, sounds like a duck ;quack quack quack) & in this case “looks like a duck” with his purch’d lips. Make it stop.
Lowell has a branch of University of MA, so no backwater
So Guy and Jamal, this website is not ‘fair’, and a ‘joke site’ because you don’t agree with it?…Disprove it then!…Just saying it’s a joke and fake means nothing without proof.
The point of this article falls flat because the variables do not make for a fair comparison. A Democrat campaigning in Massachusetts is expected to attract large crowds and a Republic doing the same is actually more noteworthy. The size of the two venues were not equal. Donald Trump packed to capacity an 8,000 seat arena while Bernie Sanders attracted “nearly 20,000” to the Boston Convention Center which holds 28,000. The comparison, to be truly noteworthy, at this point should be between Bernie’s crowds and Hillary’s crowds. It’s the establishment Democrats who are minimizing Bernie’s impact on this race, not the Trump voters.
Hungarian Top Economist: CIVIL WAR IS COMING 2016. 01. 08