Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to Democratic fundraising, reported this impressive total over a two-day span, as tracked by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this tally is unofficial and based on ActBlue’s comprehensive donation data since 2004, it gives insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The previous record for a single-day donation was on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s tracker.
The surge in donations on Sunday pushed ActBlue’s total fundraising to $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising counterpart that began in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion to date.
ActBlue shared on X, formerly Twitter, that many donors reported making their initial contributions following Biden’s announcement, which they described as a motivating factor for the grassroots movement.
Following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours, as reported by Politico. Additionally, Swing Left, which has launched a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Historically, Biden’s most successful fundraising periods have followed significant events, such as after his defeat by Donald Trump in a debate on June 27, when he and his committees raised about $28 million in the following day. Biden also gathered $19.2 million in donations after Trump was indicted on 34 felony counts, while Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million in the days surrounding his May 30 indictment, prompting a temporary crash of his campaign website. Additionally, the pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million between April and June, compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump efforts, with Biden ending June with $281 million in hand versus Trump’s $336.2 million.