Protesting Prorogation Protest Math

UPDATE TWO: Sault Ste. Marie did have a protest. Sixty people showed up. That's 0.08% of the population.

Several cities not already covered are reported here: Estimated Crowd Attendance

These include Oakville (200), Antigonish (150), Newmarket (200), Sydney (100), Sudbury (250), Peterborough (250), Quebec City (150), Orillia (300), Oshawa (150), Guelph (500), Duncan (35), Quinte (200), Kingston (400), Coburg (150), Victoria (1,500), Owen Sound (200), Yellowknife (100), Windsor (200), Belleville (250), Orangeville (150), Kelowna (100), St. John's (200), and Thunder Bay (75). And yes, even New York City had a small gathering of 30 people.

You'll also note that the numbers for the major cities are vastly at odds with what had previously been reported. Vancouver, for example, was reported as 600 by one paper, 1000 by another but here as 2,000. Yesterday, Hamilton's turnout was reported to be 350, but here it's given as 500. Edmonton goes from 250 to 300; Winnipeg from 300 to 1,000; Halifax from 500 to 750, Montreal from 300 to 500; Toronto from 3,000 to 7,000 to 9,000. In fact, you'll notice in the chart at the link that Ottawa's numbers, as reported by the organizers was 15,000! This in contradiction to what the police reported being 7,000 and what was yesterday reported variously as 3,000 or 3,500. Even for the small cities, like Regina, the numbers are larger: 350 as opposed to 300 as reported in yesterday's item.

So which one is it? Who do we believe?

Being reported by the organizers is a bit of a tip off. The methodology for how all these numbers were gathered is described in the Estimated Crowd Attended document:

"Using the #noprorogue and #CAPP tags on Twitter; we tracked the protests in each city as the estimated numbers were tweeted (by any source) we noted it; in each case where more than one report was issued we waited until the tweets roughly indicated the number present. In cases where estimates varied by large numbers; we waited until a consensus emerged. Where no consensus was found; we took the median."

You'll notice among the tweeters are such impartial folks as Dipper Libby Davis, Saskatchewan's chief union thug, Larry Hubich and lefty blogger Scott Tribe.

In any case, I don't suppose these new numbers are going to change the overall percentages by very much. As with most street protests, those present represent only a tiny fraction of the voting public, and normally don't include those of us who are closer to the centre of the spectrum.

The fact that tweeters on sight were sending out a continuous flow of messages suggests rather strongly that those who did attend were hardly a non-partisan demographic, but rather either Dippers or Liberals, whether card carrying or not, and were probably from the younger end of the usual age cohorts. Tweeting is a young person's "thing". In other words, they certainly don't represent a statistically significant sample of Canadian opinion on the issue. Far be it for the MSM, though, to do any sort of analysis from that angle.
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UPDATE: One thing I should mention, too, is the fact that in many of the media reports about the protests, the NDP figures prominently. Well, just to put that little ort into it's proper perspective, I give you this:

Bob Rae: King of Proroguing

Yup.

"As premier, he prorogued this Legislature not once, not twice — but three times. And for much longer than Harper has prorogued the federal Parliament.

Rae’s NDP won power Sept. 6, 1990. On Dec. 19, 1991, Rae prorogued the House. They didn’t come back until April 6, 1992. He then prorogued again, Dec. 10, 1992 — and didn’t come back until April 13, 1993.

By 1994, his government had run out of steam. They were running double-digit deficits and he’d doubled the debt. Some of his experimental policies proved laughable at best and disastrous at worst.

Limping badly, he prorogued for the third time on Dec. 9, 1994. The House did not sit again until the legislature was dissolved April 28, 1995.

Rae didn’t even bring in a budget that year."

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Gleaning the news reports this morning for figures describing the turnout for the prorogation protests, this is what I've found, so far:

Toronto and Ottawa 3000 each (or was it 3500 in Ottawa and 7000 in Toronto?) The same article says 300 in The Peg, 300 in Regina, 200 in Calgary, 200 in Edmonton, although this one rather vaguely says "hundreds" for Edmonton and this one says 250. This one says 200 in Regina and this one agrees with the 300 count for Winnipeg.

A big 300 in Montreal.

500 in Halifax, or was it 400?

"about 500" in Waterloo.

400 in Saskatoon.

200 in Calgary - "a fraction of the estimated 3,000 people who gathered at Olympic Plaza 13 months ago to rally against a Liberal-led opposition coalition's bid to overtake the Conservative government."

"Just over a 1000" in Vancouver (or was it 600?) and they ate perogies, too!!

Most of these reports say there were over 60 locations planned, although the last one says 50 and a full count of all the communities mentioned is in fact only 50. This one actually lists 49 in Canada (*see below). While most of the reports also say protests were planned in cities outside of Canada as well, I haven't been able to find reports of the numbers attended at those locations, if, indeed, they actually took place. However, I did find this, regarding one of the foreign locations:

London Prorogation protest skips Buckingham, heads for pub h/t Peter B. @ SDA.

*A list of communities where rallies were allegedly planned follows. Where not already cited above, I've placed the reported number in attendance, when it was given in the article:

Antigonish, Barrie, Belleville, Bolton, Calgary, Charlottetown (100), Edmonton, Fredericton (50), Guelph, Halifax, Hamilton (350), Huntsville, Inverness, Kelowna, Kingston, London (500), Mississauga, Moncton, Montreal, Newmarket, North Bay ("more than 100"), Oakville, Orangeville, Oshawa-Whitby, Ottawa, Owen Sound, Penticton, Peterborough, Prince Rupert, Quebec City, Quinte, Regina, Saint John, Saskatoon, Sault Ste. Marie, St. John’s, Stratford, Sudbury, Sydney, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vancouver, Vernon, Victoria, Waterloo, Whitehorse, Windsor (200), Winnipeg and Yellowknife.

Then there was this lonely report from a community not on the list: Terrace, BC 35

All told, there are thirty-one places for which I've found no reports of the actual day's event in the news.

With respect to the nineteen that do give an estimate, just looking at those numbers it's interesting to see that far and away they seem to be rounded to the nearest 50 or perhaps more frequently, to the nearest 100, so undoubtedly are wildly inaccurate. For a few, there was more than one estimate and for a handful of those, the estimates are vastly different, 600 versus 1000 for Vancouver, for instance, or 3000 versus 7000 for Toronto. The only possible exception is Terrace, which is a very small community in comparison to places like Ottawa or Calgary. For the community of Terrance 35 people represents 0.31% of the population. That's not thirty-one percent, but point three-one percent.

So what do we get with the rest of the places where estimated attendance is given? A trip to Statistics Canada's website will give you access to population figures for each city. Using the official population figure and the figures reported at each location, this is what I get as a percentage of the population which came out to protest. (I've used the more generous estimate, in those cases when estimates differ):

Calgary - 0.02%
Charlottetown - 0.3%
Edmonton - 0.03%
Fredericton - 0.1%
Halifax - 0.13%
Hamilton - 0.07%
London - 0.14%
Mississauga - 0.07%
Montreal - 0.01%
North Bay - 0.18%
Ottawa - 0.43%
Regina - 0.17%
Saskatoon - 0.2%
Toronto - 0.28%
Waterloo - 0.5%
Windsor - 0.09%
Winnipeg - 0.05%
Vancouver - 0.17%

Moral of the story? Of those places where protests were documented in the press or on a blog, not one came to more than one half of one percent of the population of the community in which it was held.

Perhaps tomorrow, or later in the week, some media outlet in some of the 31 communities where protests were allegedly planned will produce a report. This would serve to a) prove that a protest actually did take place and, with any luck, b) give an estimate of how many braved the cold to come out and protest the prorogation of parliament. If you want to help, be on the lookout for a report on a protest in any of the following locations and put the URL in the comments:

Antigonish, Barrie, Belleville, Bolton, Guelph, Huntsville, Inverness, Kelowna, Kingston, Moncton, New Market, Oakville, Orangeville, Oshawa, Owen Sound, Penticton, Peterborough, Prince Rupert, Quebec City, Quinte, Saint John, Sault Ste. Marie, St. John's, Stratford, Sudbury, Sydney, Thunder Bay, Vernon, Victoria, Whitehorse and/or Yellowknife.

The reports in the media made much of the fact that a Facebook group had been formed and it was via this group that the protests were organized. The reports have suggested that at the latest count, the Facebook group boasted 121,000 members. To put that into perspective, that represents 0.38% of Canada's population. Again, less than one half of one percent.

Until we have further information, what, pray tell, was the all the fuss in the media about?