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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Elections & voting fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about elections & voting. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

5,415 published reviews in this topic

NewtralElections & voting

Audio que dice que Pedro Sánchez ha impedido a Vox enviar propaganda electoral

Publisher’s rating: Falso

Newtral’s review addresses an audio attributed to a supposed Correos worker. As described in the article, the speaker alleged that acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had changed the law to prevent Vox from accessing the electoral register and therefore from sending voters campaign material. The speaker reportedly contrasted Vox with other parties, which were said to have retained voter addresses from the previous election. Newtral rejects the audio’s allegation and notes that Vox had stood in the general election on 28 April 2019, alongside other longer-established parties. The supplied excerpt does not provide the underlying legal analysis or further evidence about access to the register or campaign-mailing procedures, so it does not support a more detailed account of how those specific arrangements were checked.

NewtralElections & voting

El censo electoral aumenta porque el Gobierno «nacionaliza a 200.000 nuevos españoles»

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerned an alleged manipulation of Spain’s electoral roll before the 10 November 2019 general election: a viral video said that the government had enabled 200,000 new Spaniards to be naturalized in less than nine months, linking that alleged increase to irregular immigration. The review says the video’s account was false. The review distinguishes the increase in registered voters from the video’s explanation for it. It reports that the electoral roll grew by 225,393 people between 1 January and 1 September 2019, while 24,159 irregular immigrants entered Spain over the same period. The review states that the roll’s growth could not be attributed to the number of irregular arrivals, and reports that the National Statistics Institute (INE) attributed the increase to people who had reached voting age since the 28 April elections. It says the INE reported this explanation on 26 September. Thus, the evidence presented addresses both the scale and the proposed cause: the reported roll increase was not evidence that 200,000 new citizens had been naturalized, and the review gives a different explanation for the increase. The excerpt does not provide further detail on the video’s provenance or on the underlying INE data, so no additional verification method or supporting documentation can be inferred.

NewtralElections & voting

Han movilizado a guardias civiles del Escuadrón de Caballería a Sevilla para que no puedan votar

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerned an audio circulating during the reflection day before Spain’s 10 November 2019 election. In it, a woman said her son-in-law and other members of the Guardia Civil Cavalry Squadron had been sent to Seville “so they could not vote,” and alleged that similar deployments affected GRS officers from across Spain. She concluded that Vox would lose those votes. The review reports that both the Interior Ministry and the Unified Association of Civil Guards told Newtral the audio’s content was false. The excerpt does not provide the audio itself or identify its speaker, so it supports the review’s account of what the recording alleged, not independent identification of the speaker or recording’s provenance. The review says a voting mechanism had been established for deployed civil guards who had been unable to request a postal vote. It also describes a contemporaneous legal development: the Supreme Court overturned the Central Electoral Board’s decision barring deployed National Police officers in Catalonia from voting, and ordered measures extending the postal-vote deadline through 10 November. The review says the extension applied to personnel deployed without prior warning from 31 October 2019, and that the Electoral Board extended the procedure to other State Security Forces personnel in the same situation. This context undermines the audio’s assertion that deployment meant those officers could not vote; the excerpt does not establish that every deployed officer met the conditions for the extended procedure.

NewtralElections & voting

Las papeletas de las elecciones del 10N en las que pone «noviembre 19» son nulas

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerns a viral video and WhatsApp message asserting that ballots for Spain’s 10N elections were invalid because they showed «noviembre 19». The review explains that the “19” refers to the year, not a day of the month. It reports that Infoelectoral, the Interior Ministry’s electoral-information portal, told Newtral that the ballots were correct and had been validated by the relevant Provincial Electoral Board. The review also sets out the distinction between a date printed on an otherwise valid ballot and changes that can invalidate a vote. It quotes the Central Electoral Board saying that slight deviations from the official version are permitted when they do not create doubt about which candidacy the voter is choosing. It describes invalidity grounds including using a non-official ballot model, altering candidate names or their order, adding an expression or other intentional alteration, and placing ballots from different candidacies in one envelope. The review therefore presents the challenged year notation as neither a reason for invalidity nor evidence of an intentional alteration.

Fact CrescendoElections & voting

Claim: H Raja statement on AIADMK by election victory

Publisher’s rating: PARTLY FALSE

The review examined a viral Facebook post that attributed to H. Raja the claim that the AIADMK won because Prime Minister Narendra Modi wore a dhoti and a loincloth. The post also attributed a related remark about Modi’s dhoti to BJP leader K. T. Raghavan. The review says the post was shared on October 24, 2019, after the AIADMK won the Vikravandi and Nanguneri assembly by-elections that month. To check the attribution, the review says it searched News7 Tamil’s official Facebook page for information about H. Raja. It found a post dated October 24 in which he thanked voters and described the by-election results as a Deepavali gift to Hindus. The review does not identify this as the viral wording; instead, it presents it as the authentic H. Raja post it located. The review separately reports that K. T. Raghavan told media the Prime Minister’s wearing a dhoti during his visit to Mamallapuram might have affected the AIADMK’s by-election success. It distinguishes that reported comment from the viral post’s claim about H. Raja, concluding that the alleged H. Raja quote was fabricated. Its stated overall result is “Partly False”; the excerpt does not explain which part of the viral post it considers true and which part false.

NewtralElections & voting

Que los [partidos] que no saquen un 3% no estén en el Congreso, como en todos los países de Europa

Publisher’s rating: Falso

Albert Rivera made the statement during a candidates’ debate held by Spain’s Academy of Television: parties that failed to reach 3% should not enter Congress, “as in all the countries of Europe.” The review examines whether that description of European electoral systems is accurate, rather than treating the proposed threshold in isolation. It reports that the Venice Commission’s latest report identified eight countries with proportional systems and no electoral threshold: Finland, Portugal, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Iceland, Macedonia and Bosnia. The comparison with nearby countries also undermines the claim’s broad wording. The review explains that France and the United Kingdom use majoritarian systems, unlike Spain’s proportional system, and that their mechanisms do not amount to the same kind of nationwide threshold: French candidates need 12.5% support in their district to advance from the first round, while in the UK the district’s top vote-getter wins the seat. Among nearby proportional-system countries, the review says Portugal has no threshold and Italy has a 3% threshold, with an exception allowing lists above 1% to join coalitions. The review also describes Germany’s 5% threshold as an imperfect comparison: it applies to only part of Parliament, because some members are elected in single-member constituencies, and a party can also clear the threshold by winning three constituency seats. Taken together, the examples show that a 3% threshold is not a rule shared by all European countries; electoral systems and exceptions vary. The review says an expert, Simón, considered Germany a possible inspiration for Ciudadanos’s proposal, but the German rules described do not support Rivera’s claim about Europe as a whole.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturElections & voting

In der Überschrift eines Online-Berichts der «Berliner Tageszeitung» über die Landtagswahl im Freistaat wird die folgende Behauptung aufgestellt: «SPD in Thüringen nur noch eine Ein-Prozent-Partei

Publisher’s rating: Die Überschrift ist falsch, denn die SPD hat in Thüringen mehr als ein Prozent der Wähler erreicht.

The dpa fact-check examines a headline in an online report by the «Berliner Tageszeitung» about the Thuringia state election. The headline described the SPD as a “one-percent party”; the review compares that wording with the reported election results. The article identifies the election as having taken place on 27 October 2019 and cites the state’s preliminary official final result. According to the figures given in the review, the SPD received 8.2 percent of the second votes, down from 12.4 percent in 2014. It also received 10.8 percent of the first votes. The review says the party was entitled to eight seats in the parliament. These figures are the decisive evidence against reading the headline as a literal description of the party’s vote share: both reported vote measures were above one percent, and the party won seats. The review also explains the parliamentary significance of the comparison: under its account, a result of only one percent would have left the SPD below the five-percent threshold and outside parliament. The supplied text does not describe any further checking procedure beyond citing the preliminary official state election result and the 2014 result.

FACTLYElections & voting

Pankaja Munde crying after her defeat in Maharashtra General Elections-2019.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY investigated an image shared as showing BJP leader Pankaja Munde crying after losing in Maharashtra’s 2019 election. Its review identifies the image as a frame from a TV9 Marathi interview, rather than footage of her reacting to the election result. The review says the interview took place on 20 October 2019, before results were declared on 24 October, and reports that Munde did not cry during the interview. Those details contradict the image’s claimed timing and depiction. (S1: “The image in the post is a screengrab of Pankaja Munde’s interview with a news channel on 20 October 2019, but the Maharashtra Election results were declared on 24 October 2019.”; “Moreover, Pankaja Munde hasn’t cried anywhere during that interview.”) The review describes two checks: comparing the interview’s timing with the results announcement, and examining the TV9 Marathi video. It says the interview was found on the channel’s YouTube account and that the pictured moment appears at 1:42. The review also reports that Munde lost in Parli, but the image itself came from an interview conducted before that result was known. (S1: “So when searched on YouTube, the interview video was found on the ‘YouTube’ channel of ‘TV9 Marathi’.”; “The visual in the image can be seen at 1:42 secs of the interview video.”; “BJP leader Pankaja Munde has lost from the constituency ‘Parli’.”)