Vote for greatest TV vampire of all time

In this day and age all the movie vampires of the past are TV vampires. DVDs are technically still TV (at least to me) so it covers a lot of ground. How many people have seen Bela Lugosi anyplace else? Both Peter Cushings', and Christopher Lees' Dracula had merit too. If you look up Dracula here on IMDb, you get 173 EXACT Matches. That is just one Vampire, the main one for sure, but that's beside the point.
I see you answered your own question, but let me ask another. Which Barnabas from which Dark Shadows?

Well, that poll's long over, and Spike won anyway (HUH???? Ridiculous. Go figure). Actually, that merely shows the ubiquity of the Buffyverse: two Joss Whedon shows, Buffy and Angel, that ran one after another for eight years during week-night prime time on the WB, then seemingly forever in syndication without letup (still!) on TNT ... whereas most of the other vampire shows either

1) ran/run when/where they necessarily had/have far fewer viewers than they might have during broadcast prime time (Forever Knight ran late at night on Saturdays, 11:30 pm or midnight, when I watched it in Chicago, whereas True Blood is available only on premium cable to HBO subscribers);

2) had a very short run (Moonlight, Blood Ties, and Kindred: The Embraced);

3) are too old to be remembered by most of the folks most likely to take this poll, i.e., younger than the current TV audience as a whole (Dark Shadows and Kolchak: The Night Stalker), or

4) are too new to have enough fans yet (The Vampire Diaries).

Given how long the Whedon shows have been on air, one could have predicted that one of his characters would win without any regard whatsoever for the merits or demerits of those characters. It's just the side effect of greatest public access and repetition breeding familiarity.

All of which means: this poll ain't about which TV vampire was the best or most interesting, it's really about the one(s) who got the most airplay. Period.

Because if it ***had*** been about the most interesting, intelligent, and original take on a vampire, Nick Knight would win. The whole tortured-vampire-as-detective who tries to make amends for his formerly obnoxious undead life began with Forever Knight. Blood Ties, Moonlight: vamp as detective who helps people, both variations on a theme that Forever Knight established and handled much better. Even the Buffyverse copied from Nick Knight, right down to the existential angst -- whether Joss Whedon ever admits that or not, it's bloody obvious. So to speak [wink!].

Not to mention that Lacroix would have used Spike for a toothpick and broken Angel in a nanosecond. If it weren't for the limited audience that saw Forever Knight, I'd be surprised that Lacroix, Janette and Vachon didn't make it onto the list of memorable TV vampires, because they were all fairly compelling characters (even if Lacroix and Janette were a bit more in the traditional Bram Stoker/Ann Rice line, they still had their interesting twists). So it's a good thing Forever Knight is still available on DVD, to compare and contrast with shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. The Buffyverse is for silly fanboys. You want serious (and seriously interesting) vampires, start with Forever Knight.