Officials of the Social Democratic Party (SPO), a center-left party in Austria, announced on June 5 that Mr. Andreas Babler was the winner of the race for party leadership, not Mr. Hans Peter Doskozil as previously announced, according to The Guardian .
New SPO party leader Andreas Babler holds a press conference in Vienna on June 6.
Mr Babler is mayor of Traiskirchen, while Mr Doskozil is governor of Burgenland. Mr Doskozil was announced as the winner on 3 June but SPO officials said a mistake had led to the wrong announcement.
"The ballots did not match the published digital results. Due to a technical error in the Excel file, the results were mixed up," said Michaela Grubesa, SPO's election officer.
The mistake was discovered after a journalist noticed missing ballots in the final results and reported it to the election commission. A recount was then conducted.
The unusual incident comes a year before Austria goes into parliamentary elections, where the conservative People's Party (OVP) and the Greens are in control of parliament.
The SPO election was held to replace outgoing leader Pamela Rendi-Wagner. Babler, 50, describes himself as a Marxist and Eurosceptic. He has vowed to return the SPO to its left-wing roots.
He said the confusion during the vote counting process was "painful" for those involved and he wanted to bring back the SPO completely.
Meanwhile, Mr Doskozil (52 years old) has more right-leaning views on issues such as immigration and has promised to win back the support of voters who have switched to the far-right Freedom Party (FPO).
Latest polls show the FPO leading while the SPO is likely to come second or third in the elections in a year's time.
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