Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported that sum over the last two days, according to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project. While the tally is unofficial and relies on ActBlue’s track record of total donations since 2004, it gives an early glimpse of the group’s fundraising performance ahead of mandatory disclosure deadlines.
On Sunday alone, contributors provided $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest fundraising day in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record for daily donations was on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced each other in the first presidential debate.
With this surge in contributions, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, its Republican counterpart launched in late 2019, has amassed approximately $4.3 billion in that time, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm on X, formerly known as Twitter, 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!”
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 his endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which created a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising shortly after being decisively defeated by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, when he and his committees collected about $28 million in the following days. Biden also garnered $19.2 million after Trump faced 34 felony counts. Meanwhile, Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, leading to a temporary crash of his campaign website. The super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million that same month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised a total of $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.