Prior to amendments made in 2011, the Styrian constitution mandated that cabinet positions in the state government be allocated between parties proportionally in accordance with the share of votes won by each; this is known as Proporz.

[4] The 48 seats of the Landtag of Styria are elected via open list proportional representation in a two-step process.

As the party fell short of this target, albeit by less than one percentage points, Voves announced his resignation.

However, after several days of negotiations, the government announced that Voves would be succeeded by ÖVP leader Hermann Schützenhöfer.

[2] This was received poorly by opposition parties and the federal SPÖ alike, who criticised it as a breach of political convention.