Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors via its main fundraising platform, ActBlue.
A live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, indicated that this amount was raised over two days. While the figure is unofficial—based on ActBlue’s historical donation data dating back to 2004—it provides an early insight into the group’s fundraising efforts ahead of official disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest fundraising day in the current election cycle for ActBlue. The previous high for donations was on September 30, 2020, the day of the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
The Sunday surge resulted in ActBlue surpassing $14 billion in total cash raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform launched in late 2019, has raised about $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue reported seeing a wave of new small-dollar donors, with many stating it was their first-ever contribution.
Additionally, a Biden-aligned super PAC, Future Forward, garnered $150 million in new commitments from significant donors within 24 hours after Biden’s announcement and Harris’s endorsement. Another group, Swing Left, raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and expressed his support. Notable Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also thrown their backing behind Harris.
Historically, Biden’s most successful fundraising days were right after he lost a televised debate to Trump on June 27, which generated around $28 million in contributions. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his allied groups received $69 million between his conviction on May 30 and the following day. This influx of donations briefly crashed Trump’s campaign website. During that month, the pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised an additional $70 million.
Between April and June, pro-Biden groups brought in $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups amassed $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.