Just one day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party successfully raised $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform.
According to a tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project, ActBlue, which is a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic entities, accumulated that amount over a span of two days. This figure, while unofficial and based on ActBlue’s extensive donation records since 2004, provides insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of the necessary financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions reached $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The previous record for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in the first presidential debate, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
Thanks to the influx of donations on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform established in late 2019, has raised around $4.3 billion to date, according to OpenSecrets.
In a statement on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), ActBlue highlighted the surge of new donors, revealing that many were making their first contributions in the past day, which they described as an inspiring development for grassroots fundraising.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reported receiving $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which has initiated a fund for the eventual Democratic nominee, indicated it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that Harris’s campaign is likely to be “very well financed” and confirmed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also shown their backing for Harris.
Historically, Biden experienced significant fundraising success following his defeat by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, raising approximately $28 million in the following days. He also garnered $19.2 million in the wake of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. Meanwhile, Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million in the days following his conviction on May 30, prompting a temporary crash of his campaign website due to overwhelming donor traffic; Trump’s super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations amassed $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups tallied $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.