WHAT WAS CLAIMED
A map shows the whole of Australia voted Liberal.
OUR VERDICT
False. The map shows more seats were won by Labor.
AAP FACTCHECK - A federal election results map has sparked false claims that Labor did not win because most of Australia voted Liberal.
However, the map shows the red seats won by Labor outnumber the dark blue seats won by the Liberal Party in the election on May 3, 2025.
While more of the map is coloured blue, experts say that's because the smaller, more densely populated urban seats won by Labor are simply harder to see.
The claim is in a Threads post featuring an electoral map from Guardian Australia's election results webpage published after Labor's election win.
"Another rigged election as considering the whole country voted liberal ,no way labour should still be in," the caption reads.
Despite more of the map being coloured blue, experts say it does not show that the whole country voted for the Liberals or the coalition.
Rather, it shows that some of the geographically large seats voted for them, but more of the small, densely populated urban electorates voted for Labor.
An Australian Electoral Commission spokesperson told AAP FactCheck the number of voters in each seat in a state or territory is roughly balanced based on its overall population.
Despite differences in geographic size, electorates are drawn with the aim of balancing the number of enrolled voters so every vote across a jurisdiction carries roughly the same weight.
Jill Sheppard, an electoral expert at the Australian National University, says the claim in the posts is "wrong".
"It overestimates how many voters live in rural areas," she told AAP FactCheck.
"The House of Representatives uses a 'one vote, one value' principle to ensure that no matter which electorate you live in, your vote has equal value to votes in other electorates."
Pandanus Petter, a politics research fellow at the Australian National University, says electorates are drawn up so that people with a shared geography are bound together.
"This means that in areas with low population density, the electorate ends up very large, and that there are many more electorates inside the major cities than outside of them," he told AAP FactCheck.
Dr Petter said the coalition tends to do better with rural voters than Labor, and usually wins most of the geographically larger rural electorates.
However, he said the coalition won fewer votes and seats than Labor in cities and urban areas.
"The map just doesn't show the smaller urban areas well!" Dr Petter said.
As of May 8, 2025, Labor had won at least 89 seats while the coalition sat on a diminished 40 seats in the 150-seat house.
The map doesn't show final results for all seats as, at the time of publication, vote counting was still underway and some electorates were undecided
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