The crowd for the President’s Second Inauguration is likely to be far below 2009’s record crowd:
Now that Christmas is over and New Year’s Day is just days away, the next big event on D.C. residents’ calenders is the inauguration.
And while it will still be a D.C. party, this time around President Barack Obama will attract far fewer visitors than he did for his historical 2009 inauguration.
The AP has some of the numbers for the Jan. 21 inauguration:
In 2008, 1.8 million people flooded the District for inauguration. For his second term, city officials are expecting 600,000 to 800,000 people.
Four years ago, hotels sold out months in advance for the event and visitors paid an average of $600 a night. At this point, very few hotels are sold out for the 2013 inauguration and some hotels still have half their rooms open. Many hotels may even drop their prices closer to the Jan. 21.
Not entirely surprising. It was going to be hard to match the enthusiasm of January 2009 to begin with, and Presidential second terms rarely generate the same level of interest as the first one does. In fact, it won’t be long before people start speculating about when President Obama becomes a lame duck.
