After the weekend I wanted to get one of our reporters piecing through whatever meaningful data there was about crowd size at the Tea Party protest in DC. The latest is that Freedom Works has down-revised their estimate from a completely crazy 1.5 million to a 1/2 completely crazy estimate of between 600k and 800k, which nevertheless appears to be at least ten times what independent observers estimate.
One complicating factor is that there are no official estimates. And when Eric Kleefeld called the DC Fire Department to ask about their unofficial estimate of between 60k and 70k, they told Eric that whoever had released that estimate to ABC hadn’t been authorized to do so. So even they’re running for cover.
Eric has the details.
