At first, it was announced that Darryl Kelly, the PC candidate, had won the election by a margin of twelve votes; however, it turned out that this was a mistake and that Dwight Ball, the Liberal candidate, had won by a margin of eighteen votes instead.
[4] In the general election on October 9, however, Kelly defeated Ball by a 254-vote margin.
The NDP campaign suffered a number of mishaps, most notably the decision of their presumed candidate Karen Oldford to run for the Liberals instead, and the president of the United Steelworkers union local at Wabush Mines choosing to endorse the Labrador Party instead of the NDP.
[5] During the general election campaign, Liberal candidate Gerry Tobin died on October 1.
The new Liberal candidate, John Woodrow, withdrew from the race on November 3 after it was revealed that he had previously made false allegations of bribery against MHA Beaton Tulk in 1998,[6] but then revived his campaign on November 5 after learning that it was too late to actually remove his name from the ballot.