Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean led the pack of Democratic presidential hopefuls in an online vote this week sponsored by the activist group MoveOn.org.
Over a two-day period, 317,647 MoveOn members cast their votes for one of nine candidates who have officially entered the Democratic primary race.
Dean emerged as front runner by a wide margin, with 44 percent of the vote. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich came in second, with 24 percent of the vote, followed by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, with 16 percent. The three candidates had also received the most votes in a straw poll held by MoveOn prior to this week's vote and received authorization to send get-out-the-vote e-mails to its members.
Vote totals for other candidates this week were in the single digits, with John Edwards receiving 3.2 percent, Richard Gephardt with 2.4 percent, Bob Graham and Carol Moseley Braun with 2.2 percent each, Joe Lieberman with 1.9 percent, and Al Sharpton at 0.5 percent.
In addition to voting, more than 49,000 members also pledged in a survey section of the ballot to contribute to the campaign of their favored candidate. MoveOn, a left-leaning political group based in Berkeley, California, estimated that those pledges would raise about $1.7 million for candidates' coffers, based on an average contribution of $35.
While the poll results showed impressive support from its member base for Dean, MoveOn stopped short of endorsing his campaign. The group said a single candidate would need to receive more than half of all votes in order to gain its endorsement.
The primary drew less than a quarter of MoveOn's estimated membership base of 1.4 million. Nonetheless, Wes Boyd, treasurer of the MoveOn.org political action committee, called the results "promising."
Organizers noted that candidates who have used the Internet as a tool to broaden grass-roots support, a technique employed extensively by the Dean campaign, saw efforts pay off in the online primary.
