Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, Democrats raised a remarkable $100 million through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a major political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported this amount was collected over the last two days, according to a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project. Although this figure is not official, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of upcoming disclosure deadlines.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s newly launched presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 election cycle via ActBlue. The previous record for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
This surge in donations propelled ActBlue to reach a milestone of $14 billion raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, its Republican equivalent that started in late 2019, has gathered approximately $4.3 billion in that timeframe.
ActBlue remarked on social media, “We’ve seen so many individuals say they made their first donation in the last 24 hours! It’s incredibly motivating to witness new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots movement!”
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from prominent donors shortly after Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which created a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, also reported raising over $160,000 within the same period.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and committed his support. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their backing for Harris.
In the past, Biden’s most successful fundraising days followed significant events, such as a televised debate defeat against Trump on June 27, when he raised approximately $28 million in just one day. Additionally, Biden garnered $19.2 million shortly after Trump faced felony charges. In contrast, Trump and his associated groups raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, with his campaign website experiencing outages due to the influx of donations. The aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised another $70 million that same month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations collected $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden reported $281 million in available funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.