Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) claimed a larger crowd for his rally in Queens on Saturday than Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) claimed last month for her rally in Manhattan, signaling that he is far from ready to cede the primary fight.
Sanders’s campaign estimated that 26,000 people attended his rally, where he was formally endorsed by left-wing icon Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Though an independent crowd estimate was not reported, a security firm that worked at the event counted 25,872 attendees, according to the Washington Examiner. The Examiner said the city had issued a permit for 15,000 people in the local park, but that about 10,000 people watched from outside.
In contrast, Warren’s campaign estimated that 20,000 people showed up for her rally in Washington Square Park in the heart of lower Manhattan in September, though the park itself only holds 10,000, the maximum permitted for the event. Warren’s campaign has a consistent habit of exaggerating its crowd sizes; Biden rarely draws large crowds.
Though Warren now leads in many national polls of Democratic party presidential primary voters, especially in the states that will vote first, Sanders is still clinging to his spot among the three frontrunners, together with former Vice President Joe Biden. He used the rally to send the message that he has recovered from a heart attack just two weeks before. At 78, he is the oldest candidate in the race — though both Biden and Warren are also in their seventies.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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