More than 1.15 million Upper Austrians are entitled to vote in the state and municipal elections. Whoever has reached the age of 16 at the latest on the day of the election and who has Austrian citizenship and their main residence in Upper Austria on the reference date may vote.
56 MPs are elected to the state parliament. They are divided into five electoral districts (Linz and the surrounding area, Innviertel, Hausruckviertel, Traunviertel and Mühlviertel), which have representatives according to their number of inhabitants. If not all mandates can be awarded at constituency level, these are divided between the parties at the state level on the basis of the “remaining votes”.
The state government is elected by the MPs in the constituent session of the state parliament, which must take place within four weeks of the election. The number of government seats for a party depends on its strength, for a national council a parliamentary group needs around nine percent of the vote. Only the governor needs a simple majority of all members to be elected in the state parliament. The other state government members are each elected by their own parliamentary group.
Not only the state parliament will be re-elected on September 26th, also the one Local councils in all Upper Austrian municipalities and the mayors. These are the only ones to be chosen directly in a personality choice. If a candidate does not receive an absolute majority, a runoff election takes place two weeks later between the two candidates with the highest number of votes.
