On July 9, only nine days after being sworn in, Turner asked Sauvé to dissolve parliament and advised her to call an election for early September. Turner was persuaded by internal polls that showed the Liberals were ahead of the Tories; after Turner won the leadership his party surged in the polls to take a lead, after trailing by more than 20 percentage points before he was selected. Progressive Conservative leader Brian Mulroney and other experts had expected Turner to tour Canada during the summer and early autumn, accompanying Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II on their upcoming visits, and then call the election for later in the autumn. However, the Liberals' polling data was faulty; they had in fact not polled since May and the situation had since changed, not least because of the public uproar over the patronage appointments. As the campaign unfolded, the Tories and Mulroney, who was fighting his first general election in any capacity, soon took the lead.