While the WASG hoped to gain a large enough membership and to raise enough money for an election campaign by the originally scheduled election date (some time in September 2006), it now faced the difficulty of an early election one year ahead of schedule – occurring on the date of 18 September 2005. Polls predicted an election result of at most 3% for the new party, well below the electoral threshold of 5%. In that situation, the idea of an electoral coalition with the ideologically similar Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), led by Gregor Gysi, was put forward by Oskar Lafontaine.