Think tank halves KL112 crowd estimate

Twitter trends research firm Politweet has halved its estimate of last Saturday's the crowd size during the People's Uprising Rally (KL112) .

A day after the rally, Politweet had estimated that the crowd size was from 136,037 to 151,185, based on the total area occupied by the crowd.

In a posting on its Facebook page yesterday, Politweet had revised the numbers to between 63,976 and 78,193 people.

This was because the group had reduced the total occupied area from 424,149.14 square feet to 275,532.03 square feet after further analysis of the photos and videos of the event.

The crowd density estimate was also increased from 3.5 to 4 square feet per person to 4 to 12 square feet per person.

Based on this formula, Politweet estimated that there were 19,775 people outside the Stadium Merdeka at the peak of the rally. The margin of error for the estimate is 10 percent.

Politweet's initial analysis on Sunday did contain a disclaimer that it would be refining its figures this week.

"This number is not expected to be revised, unless some new evidence surfaces to suggest a different crowd size," read Politweet's latest posting.

Incidentally, the police, too, trimmed their crowd estimate by half - from 80,000 to 45,000.