Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from contributors through its primary fundraising platform, ActBlue. This figure was recorded over the past two days, according to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this tally is not officially verified and is drawn from ActBlue’s cumulative donation totals since its inception in 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising achievements before official disclosures are made.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day of the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. This surpassed the previous high, which occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
As a result of the donations over the weekend, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that began in late 2019, has accumulated approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue reported a significant increase in new donors, with many individuals mentioning they made their first donations in the last 24 hours. The organization expressed excitement in a statement on X, previously known as Twitter, about welcoming new grassroots supporters.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within just 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which has initiated a fund supporting the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, commented that Harris’s campaign is likely to be “very well financed” and expressed his commitment to her candidacy. Notable Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also shown their support for Harris.
Historically, Biden’s strongest fundraising days occurred right after significant events, such as his loss to Trump during a televised debate in June, where he raised about $28 million within a day. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden garnered $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliates raised $69 million in the days following his own legal troubles, briefly causing a crash of Trump’s campaign website. In total from April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, compared to $431.2 million raised by pro-Trump groups, leaving Biden with $281 million available against Trump’s $336.2 million by the end of June.