Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic initiatives, reported this amount over the past two days, according to data compiled by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. Although the figure is not official as it stems from ActBlue’s comprehensive donation tracker since its inception in 2004, it gives insight into the group’s fundraising efforts ahead of forthcoming disclosures.
On Sunday, donors contributed $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the most significant single-day fundraising effort in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The second-highest daily fundraising total recently occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as per Murphy’s tracker.
Following the surge in donations on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its founding two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform established in late 2019, has garnered about $4.3 billion according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue noted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that many first-time donors participated in the last 24 hours, expressing excitement over the influx of new small-dollar contributions to the grassroots movement.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reportedly secured $150 million in new commitments from key donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which initiated a fund in support of the eventual Democratic nominee, claimed to have raised over $160,000 in just 24 hours.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that he believes Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed,” having also pledged his support. Notable Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have shown their backing for Harris as well.
Biden’s best fundraising moments previously occurred after a significant debate loss to former President Donald Trump on June 27, where Biden and his committees raised around $28 million from June 27 to June 28, as analyzed by the New York Times.
After Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the days following the conviction, while Trump and his affiliates collected $69 million the day after his sentencing. The surge in donations temporarily crashed Trump’s campaign website, with his aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raising an additional $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups brought in $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.