Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, the Democratic Party amassed $100 million in donations through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a fundraising initiative supporting Democratic organizations, reported this amount accrued over a span of two days via a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer affiliated with The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official and stems from ActBlue’s own tracking of donation totals since 2004, it offers insights into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of mandatory disclosure filings.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million to mark the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest single-day fundraising event of the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The second highest fundraising day in recent history occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
The influx of donations led ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, its Republican counterpart that started in late 2019, has accumulated about $4.3 billion, as reported by OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm about the surge in contributions, stating on X, formerly known as Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first donations in the last 24 hours, highlighting the increasing participation of small-dollar donors in the grassroots movement.
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from significant donors shortly after Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as noted by Politico. Swing Left, which launched a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, voiced support for Harris’s campaign on Monday, indicating it would be “very well financed.” Notable Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also expressed their support for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s peak days for fundraising occurred soon after his significant defeat by Donald Trump in a televised debate on June 27, during which Biden and his committees raised around $28 million from June 27 to June 28, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million shortly after, while Trump and his associated groups collected $69 million from May 30 to May 31, which reportedly caused a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. Additionally, the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million that same month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups accumulated $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.