Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee supporting Democratic initiatives, reported this amount collected over the past two days, as tracked by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While the total is not official—relying on ActBlue’s donation data since 2004—it illustrates the strong fundraising activity ahead of formal disclosure deadlines.
On the previous Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million to kickstart Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. This surpassed the previous high, which occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy.
As a result of this surge in donations, ActBlue reached $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform launched in late 2019, has amassed approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue reported an increase in first-time donors over the weekend, expressing enthusiasm on social media. Additional support came from Future Forward, a pro-Biden super PAC, which secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement backing Harris. Swing Left, which aims to support the eventual Democratic nominee, raised over $160,000 in that same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, commented that Harris’s campaign would be well-funded and expressed his personal support. High-profile Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Biden has previously experienced significant fundraising spikes, particularly after being challenged by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, when his campaign raised around $28 million in just two days. Following Trump’s conviction on multiple felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million in a single day. Trump’s campaign website briefly crashed due to the influx of donations.
Between April and June of this year, groups supporting Biden raised $332.4 million compared to $431.2 million for those backing Trump. As of late June, Biden’s campaign had $281 million available, while Trump had $336.2 million.