Trump claims Harris’s rallies are smaller. We counted.

The sheer support that Vice President Kamala Harris has generated at her rallies has shocked former President Donald J. Trump, who has long emphasized and often exaggerated the size of his crowds. He has said, often repeating falsehoods, that his crowds are much larger than Ms. Harris’s, and the Harris campaign has returned with its own digs at the enthusiasm of Trump rallies.

We visited six rallies—every campaign event the candidates held over a three-week period in August—in six states, taking photos, capturing video, and capturing 360-degree images to analyze which crowd-size claims were compelling. The analysis found that, despite Trump’s claims, both candidates draw similarly large crowds.

On a Friday night, Mr. Trump drew 11,500 people to the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. Here’s what it looked like:

On a Tuesday night during the weeklong Democratic National Convention in late August, Ms. Harris drew 12,800 people to a campaign event at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Here’s a scene from that gathering:

The four other campaign events The Times visited were similarly busy, with crowds generally filling the space set aside for the event. The rallies were held in venues with a maximum capacity of between 6,800 and 19,300 people, although in some cases sections of seating were cordoned off and extra seating or standing room only was added.

For each of the six events, The Times counted the number of people visible in images taken shortly after each candidate began speaking, accounting for people in dimly lit and darkened areas. This number does not represent people who may have left early, before the images were captured, or arrived late.

Experts say that the size of the crowd at rallies has no direct correlation to winning or losing an election. For one, event organizers can strategically choose locations with small capacities, such as buildings on a college campus that can hold only a few hundred people. The day of the week and time of day can also affect the size of the crowd and when people decide to arrive or leave.

Yet crowd sizes have been a sensitive subject for Mr. Trump throughout his political career, his fixation increasing recently as enthusiasm for the new Democratic ticket has grown. Mr. Trump falsely claimed that photos of crowds at Ms. Harris’s events had been manipulated using AI

In response, the Harris campaign posted a video compilation of moments from Trump’s rallies, showing audiences yawning. It also wrote in a separate post on Truth Social that Trump’s audience left the Pennsylvania event early, leaving “even more empty seats.”

According to the Times, people left early at two of Trump’s three events, including when he gave his speech.

Photos taken at Trump’s rallies show where people have left their seats. Below is a series of photos from his Aug. 17 rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., taken 13 minutes and a little over an hour into his speech.

And here’s how the seats emptied after Trump started his speech at the August 23 rally in Glendale, Arizona.

The longer duration of a Trump event compared with a Harris event may have contributed to a higher number of early exits. Trump rallies typically arrived earlier in the day, and opening speeches typically started earlier and lasted longer. Of the six rallies The Times visited, Mr. Trump spoke four times as long as Ms. Harris.

Despite the limited correlation between crowd size and election results, the open bickering between the two campaigns over this metric suggests it has at least some political significance.

Large, enthusiastic crowds can also help energize the candidate himself as he delivers his speech, said Todd Belt, director of the Political Management Program at George Washington University. It can also contribute to a “bandwagon effect,” showing those who aren’t there in person that the enthusiasm for a candidate is real.

“While I don’t think these types of events change people’s minds, they do make people feel like you’re not alone,” said Betsy Reiser, 62, a participant at a rally for Harris in Savannah, Ga. “It’s really important to feel like you belong.”