UKH

Reading about a pro Scottish independence rally today the organisers estimated there were 12000 people. Police estimate was 4-5000. It's not the first time I've seen this discrepancy, especially at political rallies (many different parties). To what end would the police give out false numbers?

Who do you believe in these situations? 

Gay pride in Glasgow today had an estimated 9000 people. Both police and organisers broadly agreed on the total. 

It's not easy to get an accurate number but there are methods to estimate.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/science/how-do-you-estimate-cro...

I think often they are measuring two different things. The organisers report the number that attended through the day. On really big marches, many of the early birds will have finished and gone before others have got to the start. Official figures tend to be an estimate based on extrapolating samples of crown density at a particular moment.

Add in a bit of rounding up and down respectively and they could both be reasonably true measures, just not of the same thing.

That makes sense, but a crowd numbering 4000 is somewhat different from 12000. I'm trying to understand why the police would round down the numbers. I would have thought that for future funding etc they would be happy to show large numbers of protestors.

4,000 or 12,000 is quite small so probably my comments about a snapshot v total through the day don't really apply. Don't know beyond that.

It’s probably more likely that it’s the organizers rounding the number up.

What you want to do is ask the mobile phone operators how many more connections they had on the area that on a typical, different but similar day.

I have also wondered about these discrepancies in the past; it seems typical for the police estimate to be several times lower than the organisers’ estimate for political rallies.  I assume without any real evidence that the UK police are better at estimating numbers and that they have less reason to bend the truth compared to people convening and publicising a political rally...

all depends on the agenda of those doing the reporting

It's all about manipulating public perception. I find it interesting that you seem to sssume the police have under reported the numbers rather than the organisers over reporting them to make their rally look more successful than it was. Frankly though even if it was 12000 people that's hardly a headline number. 

Sometimes the bigger number scans better, like Joni Mitchell's half a million vs 450,000, which wouldn't have worked.

Is it not obvious? 

Particularly with political rallies or protests, the bigger the number the organisers can say were there the bigger deal it'll seem when reported in the press. If 12,000 people are said to have attended a rally it implies the cause is better supported and what they are rallying about more important than if only 4000 people were said to attend. 

The police would rarely have reason to try and downplay numbers, for them, it's an operational thing. If you only send out enough officers to secure a crowd of 4000 when there are actually 12,000 present, they are going to have problems. 

Quite the opposite.

So, just to act as Devil's advocate,  if you had only sent enough officers to manage 4000 protestors and 12000 turned up, you might want to downplay the numbers to make it look like you were properly prepared?

Do you think they do?

Quite the opposite? 

I think your definition of opposite is different to mine. 

I think the clue is in your first sentence...'''Scottish independence ...'.

Just some fanciful figure they've dreamt up.

Not just in the UK, seems a general rule that in France the police estimate is usually about half that claimed by the organisers (same for both left & right wing demonstrations)