Estimating attendance at political rallies and demonstrations is a notoriously imprecise science. Glenn Beck’s “Restore America” rally at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial has been variously estimated from 87,000 by the Huffington Post, 300,000 by NBC News and the New York Times and 500,000 by rally organizers. Sky News concurred with rally organizers in estimating attendance at 500,000.

A counter rally led by Al Sharpton was estimated to have drawn several hundred people.

The rally was disciplined and well organized, with general themes of turning to the Creator and being guided by faith. The timing of the rally coincided with Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech”, which tended to increase the tone of inclusiveness in the rally. The New York Times noted as follows concerning the presence at the Glenn Beck rally of Alveda King, a niece of Dr. Martin Luther King.

“While the crowd at Dunbar was mostly African-American, the audience at Mr. Beck’s rally was overwhelmingly white, though a number of speakers and performers were black.

Among them was Alveda King, a niece of the civil rights leader, who in a speech said that if Dr. King were alive he would commend the organizers of the event and “would encourage us to lay aside the vicious lies that cause us to think we are members of separate races.”

The rally was religious in tone and did not feature a single mention of President Obama by any of the speakers. Despite this, the rally is seen as likely to energize conservative opponents of the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress. The rally is likely to increase the national profile of Glenn Beck, as well as of the religious wing of American political conservatism.

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