No, There Probably Weren’t 200,000 People at the Miss America Parade

The most widely-touted estimate put the size of the crowd at this year’s Miss America Parade–back in A.C, baby!–at 225,000. One Jersey statistician says the city artificially inflated that number. By a lot.

The width of the Boardwalk is also known. It is 60 feet wide from Revel to approximately Bellevue Avenue, where it becomes 40 feet wide down to Albany Avenue. Space in the middle of the Boardwalk, varying from 20 to 30 feet, was set aside for the parade, leaving a much reduced area of approximately 50 percent for folding chairs, parked rolling chairs and standing room.

OK, this section doesn’t do anything to explain how he got to his figure–but it should convince you that the guy did his homework. His point is: There were only so many chairs on the boardwarlk, so the vast majority of those 225,000 would have had to be standing. And based on a review of video and photographs, those people simply weren’t there. The crowd was more like 60-80,000, he says. Which ain’t bad, really. By the way, here are our dissenter’s credentials: Anthony Marino has taught demography courses at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He is retired from the South Jersey Transportation Authority, where for 24 years he monitored visitor numbers and traffic patterns in Atlantic City. [Press of Atlantic City]