Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democratic fundraising efforts surged, raising $100 million through ActBlue, the main fundraising platform for the party.
ActBlue reported this significant amount raised over the past two days on a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy of The Marshall Project. While this figure is unofficial and based on ActBlue’s own tracking since its inception in 2004, it indicates a strong fundraising momentum ahead of the required financial disclosures.
On Sunday, donations flooded in with $66.9 million designated for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the largest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 election cycle recorded by ActBlue. The previous record was set on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy.
As a result of this donation surge, ActBlue has raised a total of $14 billion since it was established two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform that began in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue expressed excitement over the influx of new 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!”
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reported receiving $150 million in new commitments from major supporters within just 24 hours of his announcement and Harris’s subsequent endorsement. Furthermore, Swing Left indicated that it raised more than $160,000 in the same timeframe to support the eventual Democratic nominee.
On Monday, Evercore founder Roger Altman remarked that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Democratic heavyweights George and Alex Soros have also shown their backing for Harris.
Biden’s past top fundraising days followed notable events, such as after he was decisively defeated by Trump in a debate on June 27, when he and his committees raised around $28 million within 24 hours. He also garnered $19.2 million following Trump’s conviction on multiple felony counts, during which Trump’s campaign experienced a surge in donations that briefly crashed their website.
Throughout the period from April to June, pro-Biden efforts amassed $332.4 million while pro-Trump groups received $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden’s campaign had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.