Just a day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not seek re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a fundraising platform for Democratic entities, reported this amount over a two-day period through a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official and is based on ActBlue’s extensive donation tracking since its inception in 2004, it highlights the group’s fundraising performance ahead of any formal disclosures.
On Sunday, alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising effort for the 2024 election cycle recorded by ActBlue. The previous highest daily total occurred on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate.
The surge in donations allowed ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its establishment two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising counterpart that started in late 2019, has amassed approximately $4.3 billion according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue noted on X, formerly Twitter, that many recent contributors mentioned this was their first-ever donation, emphasizing the excitement of welcoming new small-dollar donors into the grassroots movement.
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Swing Left, which initiated a fund supporting the eventual Democratic nominee, indicated it raised over $160,000 in just one day.
Evercore founder Roger Altman expressed on Monday that Harris’s campaign is expected to be “very well financed” and confirmed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also expressed their backing for Harris.
In the past, Biden’s significant fundraising days followed his defeat to former President Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where he and his committees garnered roughly $28 million in just two days. Additionally, Biden raised $19.2 million in the days after Trump faced 34 felony charges. In contrast, Trump and his affiliates obtained $69 million from the day of his indictment until the following day, even causing a brief crash of his campaign website. His aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in funds available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.