The NDP entered the 1999 election in a much stronger position than in the three previous campaigns. A poll taken three years earlier had shown the NDP leading the Progressive Conservatives for the first time since the Pawley administration. The Tories regained their lead by 1998, but fallout from the vote-splitting scandal gave the NDP an 8% lead in a Probe/Free Press poll issued in March 1999. In this period, many began to regard the NDP as a possible government-in-waiting. Later polls showed the gap between the parties narrowing to a virtual tie.