Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, Democrats successfully raised $100 million from supporters via their main fundraising platform, ActBlue.
The total was reported over the past two days by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, through a live tracker. While this figure is unofficial as it originates from ActBlue’s own collection of donations since 2004, it gives insight into the group’s fundraising efforts ahead of required financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous high occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s tracker.
This surge in donations enabled ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the fundraising platform for Republicans, has accumulated around $4.3 billion since its launch in late 2019, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm about the influx of new supporters, stating, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours!” describing the excitement around new grassroots donors.
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reportedly received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which supports the eventual Democratic nominee, indicated it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Support from influential Democratic donors is also evident, with Evercore founder Roger Altman stating that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed.” Additionally, prominent donors, George and Alex Soros, have pledged their support to her.
Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising spikes after high-profile events, including a televised debate loss to Trump on June 27, when his campaign raised about $28 million in just over 24 hours, as noted in a New York Times analysis. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, compared to Trump’s $69 million in the following days, which caused a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. In total, Republican groups raised $431.2 million while pro-Biden groups collected $332.4 million between April and June, leaving Biden with $281 million and Trump with $336.2 million by the end of June.