Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors through its primary fundraising platform, ActBlue. This impressive sum was recorded over a two-day period, according to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer affiliated with The Marshall Project. While the figures are not officially reported, they offer insight into fundraising trends ahead of any obligatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions reached $66.9 million following the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the most significant fundraising day for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. This eclipsed the previous high on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
With the recent influx of donations, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its founding two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform established in late 2019, has amassed around $4.3 billion according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue reported a surge of new small-dollar donors, stating, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours! It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
The Biden-aligned super PAC Future Forward garnered $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Additionally, the group Swing Left, which has launched a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in just 24 hours.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign is poised to be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her candidacy. Notably, Democratic mega-donors George and Alex Soros are also backing Harris.
Previously, Biden experienced a spike in fundraising following his defeat by former President Donald Trump in a televised debate on June 27, raising approximately $28 million in the subsequent days, as per a New York Times analysis.
In the wake of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million between May 30 and May 31, causing his campaign website to temporarily crash. An aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that same month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups received $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. As of the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.