Estimate: 250,000 attend tea parties

Statistical whiz Nate Silver has put up an estimate of the total attendees at tea party protests yesterday. Culling newspaper estimates of 306 of the biggest rallies, Silver comes up with 262,025.

Silver acknowledges his numbers leave out many smaller tea parties–organizers say there were 750 at least–but I’m inclined to give Silver the benefit of the doubt.

The largest party appears to have been the 7000+ who gathered in Atlanta, followed by 5000 each in Denver, Phoenix, Madison and Bossier City, Lousiana. (Huh?)

Meanwhile, the conservative blog RedState has a running tally that totals just over 180,000 so far. They peg the biggest parties as 16,000 in San Antonio, 15,000 in Atlanta (doubling Silver’s estimate) and 12,500 in New York.