COLORADO SPRINGS (NYT) — About 4,200 people of all ages and colors spread across a green at Colorado College on Thursday in this conservative city for a rally with President Obama. Hours earlier, 3,500 supporters did the same in smaller Pueblo, Colo.
Together with two events on Wednesday in Denver and Grand Junction, Colo., an estimated 14,100 people in this battleground state turned out over the past two days to cheer Mr. Obama.
Good crowds, especially compared with the hundreds that typically turn out to see Mitt Romney. But four years ago Mr. Obama often was drawing five-digit throngs, filling arenas’ nosebleed seats and overflow rooms and regularly requiring shutdown orders from the local fire marshals.
Which raises a couple of questions: Where are the crowds now? And what does it mean for the results in November?
Advisers dismiss questions about whether Mr. Obama can muster the masses of the 2008 campaign, though his first official rallies in early May did suggest such questions.
While 18,300 filled an arena at Ohio State University, about 4,000 seats remained empty, and in Virginia the president filled an 8,000-seat campus center but had no need for overflow rooms.