WASHINGTON — Attendance at the Great American State Fair on the National Mall reached 912.4 million in its first six days, according to a count released Tuesday by a group of the President’s supporters, a figure that exceeds the population of the United States by roughly 570 million people and would, if those people were organized into a country, make them the third-most-populous nation on Earth.
The fair, organized by Freedom 250, the public-private partnership leading the administration’s celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, opened last week with a kickoff speech by the President and is scheduled to run through July 10. It features a Ferris wheel, exhibits from states and territories, and a scaled-down model of the 250-foot triumphal arch the President has proposed for the capital. The President has said in social media posts that the fair has been packed. Other estimates of the crowd have varied.
The new count was compiled by the Committee for an Accurate Crowd, which described its methodology in a 38-page appendix. “We counted everyone who was there, everyone who wanted to be there, and everyone who would have been there if they had known what they were missing,” said Loretta Haig, the committee’s director of tabulation. “That last group is the biggest. It’s most of the world.”
The Reporter’s review of the appendix found that the total is composed of 41.2 million visitors physically present on the Mall, a figure the committee said it arrived at by counting each person once per minute; 188.6 million Ferris wheel riders, each counted once per rotation; 302.9 million people “attending in spirit,” defined as anyone who has seen a photograph of the fair, been near a photograph of the fair, or been described a photograph of the fair; 96.3 million ancestors of people physically present, “who would have been so proud”; and 41.0 million people who have not yet been born but, according to the committee, “have already decided.” The remaining 242.4 million were classified as “general enthusiasm.” The count carries a margin of error of plus or minus the Western Hemisphere.
One visitor from Corrin, Neb., who rode the Ferris wheel for most of an afternoon and declined to get off because “the view was patriotic,” was counted 4,018 times. The committee said she had been “an extraordinary crowd by herself.”
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the Center had attempted to reproduce the figure and arrived at a total of 912.4 million only after including the committee itself 19 times. “The number is internally consistent. It is consistent with nothing else,” Teller said. “Whether a crowd can be larger than the area it is standing in is a question that requires further study, and we have applied for the funding.”
The committee said it considers the 912.4 million figure conservative because it does not yet include attendees from the second week, the attendees’ pets, or the Ferris wheel itself, which the committee said has “clearly been there every single day” and “never once left early.”
The committee said it will release an updated count after the fair closes July 10. A preliminary draft, obtained by the Reporter, lists the final attendance as “everyone,” with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.