According to this comment on socketsite, a lot of the signatures against 8 Washington were gathered far away from downtown SF/Telegraph hill:
"There had to be 20-30 people gathering signatures for this at Dolores Park and along Valencia the last two weekends. And the "approach" was about building low income housing in SF versus housing for the rich, not about height restrictions. I was particularly offended by the number of people out collecting signatures in this one little area of the city, and no where near the actual development."
http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2012/...r_on_antidevelopment_threa.html#comments