Just a day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform.
According to Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, recorded this amount over the past two days using a live tracking system. Although this figure is not official and is based on ActBlue’s internal tracker of donations since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising efforts ahead of the mandatory disclosure deadlines.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous best fundraising day occurred on September 30, 2020, following the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
Thanks to the increased donations on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, its Republican counterpart established in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion according to OpenSecrets.
In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, ActBlue expressed excitement about the influx 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!”
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reported receiving $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and support for Harris. Additionally, Swing Left, which launched a fund to back the eventual Democratic nominee, announced it raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, the founder of Evercore, stated that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and confirmed his backing. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also pledged support for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s strongest fundraising days followed a televised debate defeat against Trump on June 27, when Biden and his committees raised about $28 million in the following day. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his associated groups garnered $69 million from the day of his conviction to the next. This surge of donations even caused Trump’s campaign website to briefly crash. The super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, groups supporting Biden raised a total of $332.4 million, while those backing Trump collected $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in resources, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.