and Maurizio Bevilacqua also were graded as bilingual. (Bevilacqua later dropped out of the race.) The remaining candidates all failed the test, whereby each candidate was asked the same four questions and graded based on their syntax, vocabulary, and grammar. Hedy Fry (who also withdrew) did not finish the interview. The newspaper initially errantly reported that Kennedy and Bevilacqua had failed to meet fluency requirements in French, but later retracted this statement. The unofficial Liberal Party tradition was to alternate between francophone and anglophone leaders, a tradition informally known as alternance. This tradition would be broken if any candidate other than Stéphane Dion were to win. However, the alternance principle was not widely cited as a specific campaign issue. In fact, throughout the campaign, Dion was considered an "underdog" candidate among the "top tier" (with Rae & Ignatieff at the very top). Although polls consistently showed him as a popular second choice of delegates committed to other candidates, Dion's status as a Quebecer was widely considered a handicap, with conventional wisdom suggesting that the party was unlikely to turn to its third consecutive leader from Quebec. However Dion's chances, along with those of Brison, Dryden and Volpe, appeared bolstered by another informal party tradition: Since Mackenzie King succeeded Wilfrid Laurier in 1919, every Liberal leader had served in the previous leader's Cabinet. At that point in time, aside from incumbent Liberal leader Alexander MacKenzie, Edward Blake and Mackenzie King were the only Liberal leaders that had never served in the Cabinet of a previous Liberal leader. Early in the race the field of declared contenders was often described as having a first tier of six potential winners (the "big six") most commonly cited as consisting of Scott Brison, Stéphane Dion, Ken Dryden, Michael Ignatieff, Gerard Kennedy and Bob Rae. By August 2006, most news articles cited the top-tier of consisting of only three, or four potential winners most commonly cited as Dion, Ignatieff and Rae but also occasionally including Kennedy. In October 2006, the Toronto Star reported that Kennedy and Dion's campaigns were holding talks about a potential alliance. The paper speculated (accurately, as it would turn out) that this alliance would be likely to win as their combined delegates would surpass both Ignatieff and Rae. Opinion polls According to an opinion poll of Liberal party members by The Globe and Mail, conducted from September 12–18, Michael Ignatieff enjoyed a