Supporters cheer as US President Donald Trump arrives at a Keep America Great rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, on February 21, 2020 (Jim Watson / AFP)

Trump’s Las Vegas crowd did not outnumber Nevada Democratic voters

This article is more than one year old.
Published on February 27, 2020 at 21:24
Updated on February 27, 2020 at 23:09
2 min read
By Manon JACOB, AFP USA

An article shared more than 2,500 times on Facebook says the crowd attending a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas was larger than the number of Democrats who took part in the party’s caucuses in Nevada. This is false; voters who participated across the state outnumbered the US president’s supporters, according to a venue spokesman and a crowd estimate.

“Donald Trump had more people at his rally last night than the entire voting total for Democrats of Nevada. Maybe Trump will really win all 50 states,” says the article, which has been shared here, here and here.

A screenshot taken on February 27, 2020

Nevada has been won by the Democratic Party in the last three presidential elections but it is often a closely fought state and remains a target for Republicans in November 2020.

“Really? yay! flip Vegas. back to red!!!!” a user commented on one of the posts, referring to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s victory in Nevada in the 2016 election.

“Trump 2020 by a landslide!!” another said.

The Nevada Democratic Party said that almost 105,000 people took part in the recent caucuses, which were comfortably won by Senator Bernie Sanders -- far more than attended the Trump rally at the Las Vegas Convention Center, an enormous facility with many halls and rooms offered to those who hold events there.

“The convention hall that was used for Friday’s rally has a capacity of 8,000 people. Since there were people viewing the rally on a big screen outside, it is safe to say they reached the 8,000 person capacity inside,” Koby Stover, the communications coordinator of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, told AFP by email.

Canvassing by the Trump campaign identified “15,079 voters” during the rally, the president’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tweeted after the event ended. The president retweeted a video of people at the event prior to his arrival.

However, no Trump official claimed that more people attended the president’s speech than took part in Democratic Party voting the following day.

AFP used pictures and videos -- accessible here, here, here, and here -- that were posted on social media by Trump staffers and Republican supporters to determine the area where the crowd was standing outside.

According to Mapchecking, a crowd estimator tool, the maximum number of people who could have been in the area without causing a safety hazard -- five people per square meter -- was slightly less than 27,000.

UPDATE: This article was updated on February 27, 2020 to include additional details on the false claim.

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