One of the largest liberal groups in the country endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for president on Tuesday, after announcing that the democratic socialist garnered the support of nearly 80 percent of its membership.
MoveOn.org, which boasts a membership of 8 million, described the results of their internal democratic process that led to the endorsement as “overwhelming.”
Sanders collected a “record-setting” 78.6 percent of the 340,000 votes cast by the group’s rank-and-file. The organization reported the win was “the largest total and widest margin in MoveOn history.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton secured only 14.6 percent of the membership vote. Martin O’Malley, the former Governor of Maryland, could only muster less than one percent. Just fewer than 6 percent of MoveOn members voted for the group to not endorse any candidate.
“The vast majority of voting MoveOn members want the organization to support Bernie, so that’s what we’re going to do. We’ve pledged to run a 100% positive campaign,” the organization’s Executive Director Ilya Sheyman noted in an online post. Sheyman also promised to dispatch volunteers to Iowa, New Hampshire and other early primary states to mobilize voters on behalf of Sanders.
The endorsement arrives as new polls show a tightening Democratic contest; one in which front-runner Hillary Clinton has recently stepped up a counteroffensive.
In Iowa on Tuesday, where the latest survey gives Clinton a slim 3 point lead, the former Secretary of State went on the assault against Sanders’ plans for a single-payer healthcare system—maligning it as a giveaway to Republican state governors.
“[Sanders’] plan would take Medicare and Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act health-care insurance and private employer health insurance and he would take that all together and send health insurance to the states, turning over your and my health insurance to governors,” Clinton claimed during a campaign event.
Sanders responded later saying the attacks were “not surprising when you have a Clinton campaign that is now in trouble and now understands that they can lose.”
A Monmouth University poll released on Tuesday gives Sanders a wide 53 to 39 percent lead over Clinton in New Hampshire, the second contest in the Democratic primary.
MoveOn’s endorsement of Sanders marks only the second time the organization has thrown its support behind a candidate during the Democratic primary. Founded in 1998, the group supported Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008.
