Kamala Harris' viewership in Georgia breaks record. How it compares to Trump's

Vice President Kamala Harris's rally in Georgia on Thursday set a record for her campaign with more than 20,000 people reportedly in attendance, while former President Donald Trump attended rallies in Arizona and Nevada the same day that drew smaller crowds.

With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, candidates on Thursday took their final messages to some of the battleground states where a narrow majority is likely to decide the presidency.

According to the Harris campaign, 23,000 people gathered at James R. Hallford Stadium outside Atlanta – the campaign's largest crowd yet, according to 11Alive reporter Faith Jessie.

The seating capacity of the stadium, which hosts high school football games and other sporting events, is listed as 15,600 seats. However, photos and videos of Thursday's rally, which included former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, showed that many participants were also on the field.

Earlier Thursday, Trump led a rally in Tempe, Arizona. Photos shared on social media showed the event at the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena appeared to be at or near capacity.

Trump later led a rally hosted by Turning Point Action at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. The arena has a seating capacity of about 19,000 and was full during Trump's speech, according to The Nevada Independent.

Newsweek emailed the Harris and Trump campaigns seeking comment.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said earlier Newsweek via email that Harris needed to “play second fiddle” to Springsteen to expand her audience.

“Kamala Harris had to stretch herself and play second fiddle to Bruce Springsteen to grow her audience,” Cheung wrote. “President Trump is now the star of the show and has captivated over 100,000 people at his rallies.”

There is no evidence to support Trump's repeated claims that his rallies were attended by 100,000 or more supporters.

Jay Ulfelder, a political scientist at Harvard University, wrote in an article in mid-August that data compiled by the university's Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC) found that 28 of Trump's rallies in the first eight months of the year had an average crowd of 100,000 people about 5,600. Ulfelder noted that the CCC logged 37 political rallies at which Trump appeared during that period, but had crowd size information for only 28 of them.

In 2023, the average crowd at Trump's rallies was 4,600 and in 2022 it was 5,200. Those numbers were below the average of nearly 15,000 across eight events in 2021.

Ulfelder wrote that Harris' six campaign rallies between late July, when she entered the presidential race after President Joe Biden's exit, and mid-August reported crowds of about 10,000 to about 15,000 – and the CCC's data calculated an average crowd size of about 13,400.

The CCC “does not consider Donald Trump to be a credible reporter of the crowds at his own rallies and therefore does not include his statements about these numbers in our estimation process,” Ulfelder wrote. “Mr. Trump routinely and often greatly exaggerates the size of crowds at events he headlines, so we limit our assessment in these cases to estimates provided by the news media, law enforcement and other reporters and observers.”

“In contrast, the Harris campaign's estimates of the size of rally attendees so far are consistent with observations from news outlets and other eyewitnesses, so we include these in our records when they are reported, as we did with President Biden.”