Erica Chenoweth
Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment
Crowd Counting Consortium
A public interest and scholarly project to document protests and demonstrations in the United States.
Contact Info
Links & Downloads
Part of
The Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC), a joint project of Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut, collects publicly available data on political crowds reported in the United States, including marches, protests, strikes, demonstrations, riots, and other actions.
The CCC emerged from a collaborative effort by Jeremy Pressman and Erica Chenoweth to accurately estimate the number of people who participated in the Women’s March on Washington (and its affiliated Sister Marchers worldwide) on January 21, 2017. Upon recognizing the growing public interest in up-to-date information on crowds — and in response to requests to continue the effort beyond the Women’s March — they and their volunteer colleagues established the CCC.
For more details, see the “View + Download the Data” section below.
Meet the Team
Soha Hammam
Nonviolent Action Lab Research Associate and Democracy Visiting Fellow, AY2023-2024
Jeremy Pressman
Fellow, Nonviolent Action Lab
Jay Ulfelder
Research Project Manager, Nonviolent Action Lab
View + Download the Data
GitHub Data
Our repository on GitHub contains the compiled and cleaned data. We strive to continually update these data on Wednesdays no later than 4pm ET, with exceptions around holidays and ends of the month.
2023 Crowd Data
2022 Crowd Data
2021 Crowd Data
December 2021 Crowd Data (view).
November 2021 Crowd Data (view).
October 2021 Crowd Data (view).
September 2021 Crowd Data (view).
August 2021 Crowd Data (view).
July 2021 Crowd Data (view).
June 2021 Crowd Data (view).
May 2021 Crowd Data (view).
April 2021 Crowd Data (view).
March 2021 Crowd Data (view).
February 2021 Crowd Data (view).
January 2021 Crowd Data (view).
2020 Crowd Data
December 2020 Crowd Data (view).
November 2020 Crowd Data (view).
October 2020 Crowd Data (view).
September 2020 Crowd Data (view).
August 2020 Crowd Data (view).
July 2020 Crowd Data (view).
June 2020 Crowd Data (view).
May 2020 Crowd Data (view).
April 2020 Crowd Data (view).
March 2020 Crowd Data (view).
February 2020 Crowd Data (view).
January 2020 Crowd Data (view).
2019 Crowd Data
December 2019 Crowd Data (view).
November 2019 Crowd Data (view).
October 2019 Crowd Data (view).
September 2019 Crowd Data (view).
August 2019 Crowd Data (view).
July 2019 Crowd Data (view).
June 2019 Crowd Data (view).
May 2019 Crowd Data (view).
April 2019 Crowd Data (view).
March 2019 Crowd Data (view).
February 2019 Crowd Data (view).
January 2019 Crowd Data (view).
2018 Crowd Data
December 2018 Crowd Data (view).
November 2018 Crowd Data (view).
October 2018 Crowd Data (view).
September 2018 Crowd Data (view).
August 2018 Crowd Data (view).
July 2018 Crowd Data (view).
June 2018 Crowd Data (view).
May 2018 Crowd Data (view).
April 2018 Crowd Data (view).
March 2018 Crowd Data (view).
February 2018 Crowd Data (view).
January 2018 Crowd Data (view).
2017 Crowd Data
December 2017 Crowd Data (view).
November 2017 Crowd Data (view).
October 2017 Crowd Data (view).
September 2017 Crowd Data (view)(XLS).
August 2017 Crowd Data (view)(download in XLS).
July 2017 Crowd Data (view) (download).
June 2017 Crowd Data (view).
May 2017 Crowd Data (view).
April 2017 Crowd Data (view).
March 2017 Crowd Data (view)(download in xls).
February 2017 Crowd Data (view).
January 20-31, 2017 Data not including Women’s March (view).
1/21/2017 Women’s March Data (view; download in xls).
Submit a Record
We only post records that we can confirm and verify through fact-checking. When you submit a record, be sure to provide a source that is publicly verifiable (e.g. a news report, a Facebook group, links to online photos with headcounts, etc) or describe the crowd-counting techniques used by onsite onlookers (e.g. sign-ins, counting through distributing flyers/handouts, counting from photos/videos, and/or other crowd density estimation techniques).
We will never post, release, or share identifying information that has not already been reported in the public domain.
Nevertheless, we urge you to avoid including personal identifying information in your submission.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of actions are you collecting?
We collect publicly available data on political crowds reported in the United States, including marches, protests, demonstrations, riots, and other actions. We do not count crowds at meetings, teach-ins or academic workshops, panel discussions, fundraisers, or town halls.
What do you intend to do with these data?
Our goal is to make the aggregate data on crowd numbers publicly available for each event. We are collecting this data in the public interest and to further scholarly research.
Have your Human Research Subject boards approved this data collection?
This is a public-interest project. The University of Denver’s Office of Research Integrity and Education determined that the project does not qualify as human subjects research and therefore does not require further review or oversight by its Institutional Review Board. The University of Connecticut made a similar determination.
Where can I get the data?
Please see the links above. Explore the GitHub here.
How should I cite these data?
Please include a citation to the Crowd Counting Consortium such as: Crowd Counting Consortium, crowdcounting.org, accessed September 17, 2021.
Where does your funding come from?
Funding is made possible in part by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, and the Russell Sage Foundation. Previously, we received support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York through the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and the Humility & Conviction in Public Life initiative, a project of the University of Connecticut’s Humanities Institute.
We have collaborated with countlove.org, a volunteer group that developed a webcrawler to identify protests and demonstrations on a daily basis.
Commentary
Crowd Counting Consortium: Dude, Where’s My Protest?
Commentary
Crowd Counting Consortium: Contours of the George Floyd Uprising
Just how large and broad was that wave of protests after the death of George Floyd? How destructive was it? And how did police and right-wing counter-protesters respond to it?
Commentary
Crowd Counting Consortium: Trump-Era Themes in U.S. Protests
Under the Trump administration, what did Americans protest about?