its message failed owing to the dramatic and highly polarising effects of Whitlam's dismissal and the constitutional crisis, which produced angry demonstrations around the country. Amid the tumult, the media was almost completely focused on the two main parties, giving other groups almost no opportunities to capture the public imagination. The LM also found it difficult to establish a connection with the populace outside South Australia owing to its formation within a state-specific backdrop. Attempts were made to expand the appeal of the LM through secret merger talks with the Australia Party, who initiated the idea, but these collapsed. The campaign was also hampered by the departure of two LM candidates who relabelled themselves as the Independent Liberal Movement. The first to leave the LM, C. W. Henderson, was a member of the LM Management Committee who criticised Hall's attempts to spread the party nationally. He accused Hall of having "delusions of grandeur", leading to his membership being suspended two days later. The next day, J. Henderson, the sixth member of the senate ticket, quit, saying he did not "want to be a puppet on a party string". Groves and Henderson aggressively campaigned against the LM, although they were to receive only 0.09% of the senate vote themselves. When the election was held, there was a 12 percent swing towards the Liberal Party in South Australia, or 7 percent on two party preferred. There was a large swing against Labor owing to the dissatisfaction with the Whitlam administration, but it generally went directly to the Liberal Party. Against this background, and with relatively little media attention paid to the LM and its cause, Despite gaining prominence for his stance on supply, Hall struggled to be re-elected, gaining only 6.5 per cent of the Senate vote and relying on preferences, ironically from Labor. In South Australia, Labor gained 41 per cent of the vote, and the Liberals 51 per cent. In the lower house, the LM managed only 6.2% across the 12 seats, again recording its best result in Boothby, with 10.4%. Hall's hope for Australia-wide support for the LM was dashed owing to the previous events, with the party gaining negligible results for their candidates in other states. The lower house candidates in the Australian Capital Territory registered around 3%, but the senate candidates in Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland received less than 1%. Hall's opinion was