Here's a list of the numbers of votes at a date & time. I haven't put all the entries above in, especially where there are several on one day. (Dates are in UK format)

14/12/2002 02:08,39
15/12/2002 19:55,860
16/12/2002 11:10,1667
17/12/2002 09:34,3000
18/12/2002 04:45,4000
19/12/2002 03:09,5436
20/12/2002 05:21,7295
22/12/2002 03:54,10000
23/12/2002 10:10,11886
24/12/2002 04:07,12632
26/12/2002 14:02,13919
28/12/2002 17:15,15007
30/12/2002 04:03,15592
31/12/2002 16:49,16667
03/01/2003 13:47,18988
05/01/2003 03:47,19871

Shoved into Excel and asking for various trend lines suggests that there is, as yet, no way of guessing how high it could go - its still going up fairly smoothly at around 500 per day.