Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic groups, recorded this amount over the last two days, according to a live tracker by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While the figure is not official, it offers a glimpse into the fundraising efforts ahead of any required financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous high for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy.
This surge in donations allowed ActBlue to surpass $14 billion raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican counterpart launched in late 2019, has amassed approximately $4.3 billion, as per OpenSecrets data.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm about the recent donations, stating on X, formerly known as Twitter, that many contributors shared they made their first donation in the last 24 hours. The organization emphasized the excitement of welcoming new small-dollar donors into the grassroots movement.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC supporting Biden, reported receiving $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, according to Politico. The group Swing Left, which started a fund for the eventual Democratic nominee, raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, indicated on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and voiced his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also aligned themselves with Harris.
Earlier in Biden’s campaign, some of his most successful fundraising days followed significant events like his loss to Trump in a debate on June 27, which saw his committees raise about $28 million from that day to June 28, as per a New York Times analysis.
Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his associated groups brought in $69 million in the days following his conviction. The sudden influx of donations temporarily crashed Trump’s campaign website, and an aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., generated $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups gathered $332.4 million, compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump groups. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million on hand, while Trump had $336.2 million.