Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through their primary fundraising platform. ActBlue, a political action committee that facilitates fundraising for Democratic organizations, reported this amount over a two-day period via a tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. Although the figures are not officially confirmed, they offer insight into the fundraising landscape ahead of the mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions amounted to $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking a record fundraising day for ActBlue in the 2024 cycle. This surpasses the previous high recorded on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Following this donation surge, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago, compared to around $4.3 billion raised by its Republican counterpart, WinRed, which started gathering funds in late 2019, according to OpenSecrets.
In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, ActBlue noted the influx of first-time donors and expressed enthusiasm for the growing grassroots movement. Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC associated with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Swing Left mentioned it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, commented that Harris’s campaign is set to be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Prominent donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Historically, Biden has seen substantial fundraising boosts following significant events, including a previous surge of approximately $28 million after a debate loss to Donald Trump. Furthermore, in the wake of Trump’s felony convictions, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his aligned groups accumulated $69 million during the same period, briefly causing Trump’s campaign website to crash. In total, pro-Biden entities raised $332.4 million from April to June, compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump groups, leaving Biden with $281 million and Trump with $336.2 million by the end of June.