Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising tool for Democratic organizations, recorded this amount over the last two days, as noted by Ryan Murphy, a developer with The Marshall Project. Although this figure is unofficial and derives from ActBlue’s own comprehensive donation tracker since 2004, it provides insights into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of required financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking it the most significant fundraising day in the current 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The second-highest fundraising day in recent memory occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s tracker.
Due to the surge in contributions on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that began in late 2019, has accumulated approximately $4.3 billion, as per OpenSecrets data.
ActBlue stated on social media that they had seen many individuals making their first-ever donations in the past 24 hours, highlighting the excitement of new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots movement.
Additionally, Future Forward, a pro-Biden super PAC, garnered $150 million in new commitments from major contributors just 24 hours after Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe to support the eventual Democratic nominee.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Prominent Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also shown their backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s fundraising peaked following a televised debate loss to Donald Trump on June 27, where his committees collected around $28 million in the subsequent day. In addition, Biden raised $19.2 million shortly after Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. Trump and his affiliated groups amassed $69 million from the day of his conviction, leading to a temporary crash of his campaign website. In that same month, an affiliated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million.
Between April and June, groups supporting Biden raised $332.4 million, while those in favor of Trump secured $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million on hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.