Among the many applicants (a major share non-serious), Andreas Babler was the only contestant winning enough support to be included in the survey.

For months, the Social Democrats were in second place behind the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) in Austrian polls, although they were almost consistently in the lead in 2022, sometimes even topping 30%.

By the end of March 2023, some polls showed that the SPÖ fell into third place, which has been attributed to the infighting in the preceding months.

[7] On 25 March, the SPÖ announced that 73 people submitted their candidacy by the end of the deadline, among them 69 men and 4 women.

The SPÖ checked the validity of their registrations and debated their ballot access in its final leadership committee meeting on 27 March.

[10] Primary organizational questions about how the leadership election should be conducted were debated and announced in late March 2023 by the SPÖ's top party committees.

On Monday, 27 March 2023, the conduct of the leadership election and remaining questions was finalized and approved by the SPÖ's top party committee.

Final unresolved questions include the number of candidates and if all serious candidacies submitted by the deadline should be allowed onto the ballot.

Another question to be resolved is the possibility (or necessity) of a runoff election, in case no candidate should reach a majority of votes.

[13] On 11 April 2023, the SPÖ announced that only Rendi-Wagner, Doskozil, and Babler met the criteria above and could appear on the ballot, while the remaining 70 submitted candidacies were either invalid, incomplete or withdrawn.

The vote-counting process would be administered and cross-checked by the SPÖ's internal voting commission, independent notaries, and IT experts.

Results were released on 22 May 2023 with Hans Peter Doskozil winning, Andreas Babler coming in second and Pamela Rendi-Wagner in third place.

[2] On 11 May 2023, before the results were announced, the leader of the 20-member SPÖ election commission, Harry Kopietz [de], who was a Rendi-Wagner supporter, resigned because of health reasons.

According to the election commission, the Excel spreadsheet mix-up resulted from an outdated, non-suitable, pre-formatted and blank Excel table, which was used to table their results at previous party congresses, in which usually just one candidate (the incumbent) was running and no-votes are then subtracted from that candidate in the other column.

On 23 May 2023, after seven hours of heated debate, the SPÖ's top leadership committee voted down an additional runoff motion due to the close results between the candidates.

[20] In the week following the results of the party member survey, Andreas Babler attracted attention for his remarks and how left-wing he was, for example referring to himself as a Marxist.

[21] Later, a podcast from 2020 was made public, in which Babler strongly criticized the European Union (EU) as a "neoliberal construct with just a weak social safety net and in its behaviour more aggressive and militaristic than NATO".

Nonetheless, political experts saw his chances to be elected the new Austrian SPÖ party chairman declining after these remarks.

After being proclaimed the new SPÖ-chairman, Doskozil thanked his competitor Babler and together they promised to solve the internal disputes of the past and unify the party ahead of the next Austrian legislative election in 2024.

Doskozil accepted the news of the results being mixed up and announced his withdrawal from federal Austrian politics, instead focusing on his role as Governor of Burgenland in the future.

Babler once again apologized to voters and party officials and thanked Doskozil for his campaign and response to the results mix-up.

Babler announced his intention to hold the next ordinary SPÖ party congress (scheduled for 2024) already in the fall of 2023, wanting delegates to vote again on the chairperson, or to confirm him.