Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through ActBlue, their primary fundraising platform. This significant influx of donations, recorded over the past two days, was documented by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, who tracks donations on ActBlue’s platform, which has been active since 2004.
On Sunday alone, donations for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign reached $66.9 million, marking the largest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 election cycle via ActBlue. The previous record was set on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
With this recent surge, ActBlue has now surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, its Republican counterpart launched in 2019, has raised about $4.3 billion.
ActBlue noted on social media that many new donors reported making their first-ever contributions in the last 24 hours, highlighting the grassroots support emerging for the Democratic cause.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day of his announcement. Another group, Swing Left, raised over $160,000 in the same time frame.
Evercore founder Roger Altman expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign, stating it would be “very well financed.” Major Democratic financiers George and Alex Soros have also expressed their support for her.
Historically, Biden has experienced spikes in fundraising after significant events, including after facing Trump in a debate on June 27, when he raised approximately $28 million, and again following Trump’s felony conviction, which led to Biden raising $19.2 million shortly thereafter. In contrast, Trump and his associated groups garnered $69 million between May 30 and 31 after his conviction, briefly overwhelming his campaign website. During the April to June period, pro-Biden groups collected $332.4 million, while pro-Trump entities raised $431.2 million, leaving Biden with $281 million cash on hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million at the end of June.