Anti-HST campaign - state as of May 16th

I like the fact the campaigners are posting the signatures they have in each riding each week.   Today the numbers for May 16th were released.

• 51 of 85 ridings have reached the 15% mark - 10% is what is needed
• 21 more ridings have reached 10% but not 15%
• 13 ridings have not reached 10%
• In 8 ridings the campaign has more signatures than votes the MLA got in 2009
• One riding had there numbers drop between May 9th and May 16th, Penticton

Of the ridings where 10% has not been reached, all of them are in the core of Metro Vancouver.  The best co-relation I can find between where the campaign is not doing well and anything else political, is the places where the federal Liberals do the best in BC.

As this week, no riding has more signatures than voters in 2009, though at the rate this campaign is going, I suspect this will happen in about ten ridings.  As of this time, the campaign has collected 500,000 signatures, this is over 30% of the vote from 2009.

Will they reach 10% in all 85 ridings?  
The campaign is about half way through, Thursday is the half way mark.   Only six ridings have not achieved at least 50% of the signatures they are aiming for, 15%.  Two ridings, Vancouver Langara and Vancouver Point Grey, have not reached 5% mark yet.

There is a potential that the campaign may succeed in more than 80 ridings, possible 83 or 84, but miss in a handful.   This means the process did not succeed.   In my opinion this would lead to political chaos in BC.   The public will flip out if huge numbers of them have signed the petition and there is no referendum.   This would be very, very bad for the BC Liberals as they would be the target of anger from now till May 2013.   It is good for a populist right wing party, they would have that righteous anger to tap into that fueled the Reform party in the past.

Recall Campaigns
Anger could lead to recall campaigns in the fall.   Recall requires 40% of the people on the voter's list to sign a petition to recall an MLA.   If I were running a recall campaign, I would be aiming for 45%.   The anti-HST campaign gives us some idea if anywhere will get enough signatures to make a recall feasible.

So far in Boundary Similkameen the anti-HST campaign has collected 10216 signatures, 11179 would required to recall Liberal John Slater.   If you remember in the election, he was the replacement for Joe Cardoso who was dropped by the Liberals.  Joe ran for the BC Conservatives and managed more than 20% of the vote.

As of now, 18 ridings have managed to collect enough signatures to reach 22.5% of the voters list, half of what would be needed for recall campaign.    11 of these seats are held by Liberals at the moment.

Let us say that there was a mass recall campaign and all 11 of those Liberals were recalled.   Only five of these ridings look like places I think the NDP could win.  The other six, either the Liberals would be re-elected or the BC Conservatives would win.