Donald Trump's often misguided bragging about his crowd sizes has become a regular feature of his rallies and campaign appearances, a trait that Vice President Kamala Harris exploited during their most recent and only television debate.
By Tom Norton
Donald Trump's often misguided bragging about his crowd sizes has become a regular feature of his rallies and campaign appearances, a trait that Vice President Kamala Harris exploited during their most recent and only television debate.
The former president boasted during a recent rally at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island that he could have attracted 100,000 people to the event if he'd been given a bigger stadium, with the venue packed out at the start of the evening.
In another recent appearance, he went further and threw out an omnibus of crowd size claims which Newsweek discovered were all dubious.
At a rally in Michigan on September 17, 2024, Trump made a list of crowd numbers he had attracted at his rallies.
"We had 107,000 people show up in New Jersey, we had 68,000 people show up in Alabama, we had 79 or 81,000 in South Carolina," Trump said.
Newsweek debunked Trump's claim earlier this year about 107,000 people turning up to his May 2024 rally in Wildwood, New Jersey. The number was based on the likely number of people at and near the rally with reports suggesting that somewhere around 30,000 to 40,000 was a more accurate estimate.
Donald Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek the figure was accurate.
"107,000 showed up in Wildwood, including those who couldn't secure a ticket but came anyways to listen to President Trump outside of the venue space," he said.
A rough map of the site where Trump spoke shows at capacity, without obstructions, only somewhere between 75,000 to 77,000 people would have been able to fit. Although there may have been others outside watching Trump's speech, it was also reported that thousands of people left during it, so any onlookers would be counted against the lines of people leaving Wildwood.
Trump's claim about Alabama also seems to be inaccurate. The only rally Trump could have been referring to in Alabama was a "Save America" rally on August 21, 2022, at York Family Farms in Cullman, Alabama, supporting Mo Brooks' campaign for the U.S. Senate. While Trump has held other rallies at smaller venues in Alabama, the York Family Farms rally was open-air, with crowds pictured outside the event's main staging area.
Reports and photos from the event indeed show that tens of thousands attended but there was no report from organizers or security officials that 68,000 people were there. Speaking to AL.com, the Cullman County Sheriff's Office said it had been given a U.S. Secret Service estimate of 45,000, while Alabama GOP Chair John Wahl said it was up to 50,000. There are no estimates of 68,000.
Cheung stood by the number but did not provide evidence to support the claim.
"68,000 people showed up to the rally in Alabama, including everyone outside the stadium who were unable to secure a ticket but showed up anyways to watch President Trump's arrival and support him," Cheung said.
Using footage from the event that shows the length of the site, from where supporters queued to get in and down to Trump's stage, Newsweek was able to map out a rough area of the rally and calculate attendance using crowd estimate software. Trump's stage was in front of a row of trees near the corner of County Road 436 and 469, with the entrance barriers about halfway up the farm site along 469.
If that entire area was packed with a crowd size of around 1.5 people per square meter, then you might have reached 68,000 people on the site. However, that area was not packed around the time Trump spoke, as footage from the event shows. Equipment and infrastructure also took up considerable space. Another report by AL.com suggested that Trump may have mistaken the crowd size at Cullman for an appearance Trump said he made at the Alabama State Fair but which AL.com says he never attended.
Trump's claim that there were up to 81,000 people at a rally he attended in South Carolina also appears to be wrong. The events and venues Trump has hosted for rallies in South Carolina over the past eight years have not had capacities as large as this. As the South Carolina newspaper Post and Courier reported, he may have been referring to his appearance at the Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia in November 2023. However, this was a brief appearance, not a rally.
Trump spokesperson Cheung said: "81,000 people showed up to South Carolina for the 4th of July celebration that took over an entire town that was enthusiastically supportive of President Trump."
Trump did appear for a 4th of July celebration in Pickens, South Carolina, in 2023. However, Newsweek has previously investigated claims about the crowd size at that event and found no sound support for estimates that 75,000 people attended, let alone 81,000 people.
None of the claims that Trump made about his rallies are supported by evidence. There is no sound evidence that 107,000 people came to see him in Wildwood, New Jersey. Mapping and crowd estimate software shows the crowds he boasted of in South Carolina and Alabama are also overestimations.
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