Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not be seeking re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors through its primary fundraising platform, ActBlue.
According to a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project, the substantial amount was collected over the past two days. This figure is not official but serves as a snapshot of fundraising results ahead of any mandatory financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions totaled $66.9 million in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest fundraising day for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The previous peak occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s statistics.
With this surge, ActBlue has now surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, its Republican counterpart, WinRed, founded in late 2019, has collected around $4.3 billion.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm over the influx of new contributions, noting that many individuals made their inaugural donations recently. “It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!” the organization stated on X, previously Twitter.
In addition to ActBlue’s impressive gains, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new pledges from major donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and Harris’s endorsement. Similarly, Swing Left, which has established a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within a day.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, remarked on Monday that Harris’s campaign is poised to be “very well financed” and expressed his commitment to support her candidacy. Major Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also shown their support for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most fruitful fundraising days occurred right after his loss to Donald Trump in a televised debate on June 27, where his campaign and associated committees raised approximately $28 million within a day. Additionally, Biden raised $19.2 million following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, while Trump and his affiliates generated $69 million shortly after the conviction, leading to a temporary crash of his campaign website. The super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., also raised $70 million that month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden groups garnered $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.