And it's dealt a serious blow to their pipeline of future leadership talent.
No matter how you look at it, the election map paints a very confronting picture for the Coalition.
Whether it was their policy agenda or Peter Dutton's leadership, the message from the suburbs couldn't be clearer — they didn't want what the Liberal Party was selling.
At the moment, there are still 16 seats undecided — they're the ones with the stripes.
But even so, our big cities are now all a sea of Labor red. Let's take a closer look.
These are all the inner-city seats. Here, the colours show which party held them going into Saturday's election.
Labor dominates, while independents and minor parties hold more seats than the Coalition.
And here's what they look like now.
The Coalition could be down to one single inner-city seat, Cook in Sydney.
However, it's still possible they'll snatch a couple of others where independents are currently ahead.
Let's take one step out from the city — these are the outer metropolitan seats before this election.
The Coalition's electoral strategy was aimed firmly at these kinds of seats, and it hoped to make big inroads into Labor's advantage with policies like its cut to the petrol excise.
It didn't work. In fact, it backfired.
This is how the suburbs are looking now.
The Coalition's share of these seats will fall by half — from 14 to seven — if the candidates currently leading in the undecided seats hold on.
Old campaigners and future stars wiped out in sweep of the cities
The collapse of the Liberal Party vote has knock-on effects far beyond the make-up of this particular parliament.
The party has lost its leader and experienced frontbench talent, but also figures viewed as future leadership contenders.
Now, not only is it left trying to figure out how to recapture these urban areas, but also where its next generation of leaders will come from.
Let's take a look at who exactly lost their seat.
The biggest scalp of the night, of course, was party leader Peter Dutton, who held the Brisbane seat of Dickson for more than two decades and was largely thought to be safe.
But the swing to Labor in Brisbane also took with it Luke Howarth, a shadow minister who had represented Petrie since 2013, and had already withstood a Labor swing in 2022.
Further south, in Sydney, we saw another experienced frontbencher knocked out and a rising star in trouble.
Shadow minister for foreign affairs David Coleman is out of the parliament after more than a decade representing the people of Banks in southern Sydney.
And on the other side of the city, Gisele Kapterian fought off Warren Mundine for Liberal preselection in the blue-ribbon electorate of Bradfield only to face a very strong challenge from independent Nicolette Boele; that seat is still too close to call.
Ms Kapterian is another figure seen as a possible future star, whose contribution to rebuilding the party might be over before it has started.
In Melbourne, shadow housing minister Michael Sukkar couldn't hold back the Labor wave in the ultra-marginal seat of Deakin, losing the seat he'd held for more than a decade.
And the party may have lost a relative newcomer — and future leadership prospect — in the seat next door.
As votes and preferences are still being counted, Keith Wolahan faces an extremely tight contest in Menzies and could lose the seat after only one term.
Not only would this be a blow for the future of the party, but it's a loss that would have been previously unthinkable in a seat named after the party founder, which has never been out of Liberal hands since its creation in 1984.
Wolahan believes the party needs to get more in touch with metropolitan areas — where most Australians live — to regain support.
"We need to really dig deep and think about who we are and who we fight for and who makes up Australia," he told Insiders. "There are professional people, professional women, younger people who were worried that they'll ever own their own home again.
"We also have multicultural Australians and people who don't have a memory of the Howard-Costello era and so we need to acknowledge the cities that we live in, not the cities that we used to live in or think that we live in."
Down on the Mornington Peninsula, another future talent is also struggling to hold her seat after just one term.
Zoe McKenzie in Flinders is in a tussle against 'teal' independent Ben Smith.
One glimmer of hope for the Coalition is in Goldstein, where there is still a chance of boosting their ranks of experienced MPs, with Tim Wilson looking like he's in with a chance of winning back his former seat from 'teal' independent Zoe Daniel.
Mr Wilson was one of six Liberals to lose once-safe seats to progressive independents in the last election.
He was previously Australia's Human Rights Commissioner and served as Assistant Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction under Scott Morrison.
Across Bass Strait, there were more shocks in store for the Coalition.
The Liberals were wiped off the map in Tasmania, and a high-profile party moderate was a big casualty.
Two years ago, Bridget Archer in Bass predicted that the party was "unelectable" in its current form.
"We've got to have a revolution, really, to take the party back," she said.
"The great challenge for us is to get back to what I think was the strength of the Liberal Party at one stage, which is the ability to speak across the country, to talk to middle Australia.
"And I think that we've lost our way in that."
She was right. Her seat was one of the casualties for the Liberals.
On election night, as seat after seat turned red, Liberal senator James McGrath expressed concerns about what that meant for the future of the party.
"I think it would be a tragedy for the party to the point that has been raised on this table that if someone like Zoe McKenzie fails to win, if Keith Wolahan fails to win, if in Bradfield… if Giselle Kapterian fails to win, you know these are brilliant young people of the future of the party and it will be a challenge for us."
While all three of the candidates McGrath named are still in the running in their seats, none are a shoo-in.
Wolahan is not officially conceding defeat, but admits it's a long shot. He's confident the Liberal party can rebuild but says it needs a new vision.
"I think as a party we're very nostalgic. We look back to our heroes, whether it's Menzies or Howard or Costello, and that's great but I think we need more than the rear-view mirror.
"I think we need to look through the windscreen and say, this country's best days are ahead of it."
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