No way: 400,000 people cannot fit in Uhuru Park

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

28 October 2007

After the launch of presidential campaigns by the three main candidates, two questions have come up: one regarding the capacity of the Uhuru Park Arena and the second concerning the validity of opinion polls.

Boaz Katah puts it this way: “During the ODM Rally … the crowd [was] estimated by the Police to be about 400,000. However after ODM-K held theirs in the same venue and an equally large number turned up, I had to wonder on whether the estimates were right!”

Boaz continues: “Poll ratings give him [Kalonzo Musyoka] 8% of voters which is about 1.1Million votes. So if he had 400,000 people at Uhuru Park, then that is about one third of his supporters! Can you help me try figure this out?”

Gladly, Boaz. Gladly.

Whereas the ODM and ODM-K rallies were big, they weren’t nearly as large as President Mwai Kibaki’s inauguration ceremony of January 2003. I attended the 2003 event and we were seated (nay, squeezed) shoulder-to-shoulder on the grass terrace.

Now, when I sit with my legs bent at the knee, I comfortably occupy an area measuring about a third of a metre wide by one metre long. That works out to 0.33 of a square-metre (sq-m). However, in a squeezed position, the width of my sitting space easily reduces to 25 centimetres (cm), consequently the area occupied is reduced to 0.25sq-m.

The Uhuru Park Arena is triangular in shape with a base measuring about 250m and a height of approximately 160m (from the dais to the fence near Afya House). That makes an area of about 20,000sq-m, which is equivalent to two hectares, or five acres. But the sides of this triangular shape are curved inwards; therefore we can take away about 20 percent from the area. That brings the total seating space to about 16,000sq-m.

Now, if every person occupies 0.25sq-m, then a total of 64,000 people will fit in 16,000sq-m arena. This is the approximate number that attended the inauguration ceremony in January 2003. Any other gathering at Uhuru Park has been smaller than that. My guess is that both Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka attracted about 50,000 followers to their rallies.

Interestingly, the same number of people can easily fit in the Nyayo stadium. Its terrace is designed to seat about 20,000 and another 40,000 can stand on the football pitch. The total comes to 60,000 – almost the same as the capacity of the Uhuru Park Arena.

Therefore, it turns out that President Kibaki’s (PNU) campaign launch also attracted about 50,000 people – the same number as that of the other aspirants. Thus the second question arises: If the aspirants attract approximately the same number of followers to their meetings, how come the opinion pollsters are reporting that some candidates are more popular than others?

I will discuss the answer to that question next week and demonstrate how an opinion poll can be a more reliable measure of the popularity of candidates than an actual election.