Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, Democratic fundraising surged, bringing in $100 million from donors through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, the political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported this figure over a span of two days, tracked by Ryan Murphy, a developer for The Marshall Project. Although these numbers are unofficial and based on ActBlue’s extensive donation tracker since 2004, they offer insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising effort for the 2024 cycle on ActBlue. The second-largest amount raised recently occurred on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy.
This influx of donations on Sunday helped ActBlue surpass $14 billion in total donations since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform established in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement over the surge of new small-dollar donors, with many reporting their first-ever contributions in the past day.
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 endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which initiated a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising 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 voiced his support for her. Democratic major donors George and Alex Soros also pledged their backing to Harris.
Previously, Biden saw significant fundraising immediately following his defeat by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, raising around $28 million in just two days. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden secured $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliates raised an impressive $69 million in the 24 hours following his conviction. This surge caused a brief crash of Trump’s campaign website. Additionally, the super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised a total of $332.4 million, compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump groups, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in his campaign account, while Trump had $336.2 million.