Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not be running for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through ActBlue, their primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue reported this amount over the previous two days. Though the total is unofficial and derived from ActBlue’s own extensive record of donations since 2004, it sheds light on the group’s fundraising performance just weeks ahead of required disclosures.
On Sunday, alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the highest fundraising day in the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The second-largest donation day occurred on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy.
The wave of donations on Sunday allowed ActBlue to reach $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 raised approximately $4.3 billion, as reported by OpenSecrets.
ActBlue stated on social media that many donors expressed they were making their first-ever contributions within the last 24 hours, highlighting the excitement of new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots movement.
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new pledges from major donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Additionally, Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
On Monday, Evercore founder Roger Altman remarked that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Notable Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also offered their backing.
Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising spikes immediately following his defeat by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where he and his committees raised about $28 million from that day until June 28, according to a New York Times analysis.
Biden also garnered $19.2 million in the aftermath of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. In contrast, Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million between May 30 and May 31, coinciding with his conviction. This surge in donations temporarily caused a crash on Trump’s campaign website, while the related super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., collected $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups accumulated $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden held $281 million in cash, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.