Less than 24 hours after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million through its principal fundraising platform, ActBlue. This figure, tallied over two days and tracked by developer Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project, is based on donations recorded since 2004 and reflects the group’s fundraising effectiveness ahead of formal disclosures.
On the previous Sunday, a remarkable $66.9 million was raised for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The next highest day for donations historically was during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump on September 30, 2020.
With this latest surge, ActBlue has now surpassed $14 billion in total fundraising since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, the Republican fundraising platform, WinRed, which started in late 2019, has garnered approximately $4.3 billion to date.
ActBlue reported an influx of new small-dollar donors, with many contributing for the first time in the wake of Biden’s announcement. Meanwhile, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in commitments from major donors shortly after the announcement, while Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 in just 24 hours.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed,” and noted support from notable Democratic mega-donors, including George and Alex Soros.
Historically, Biden’s most lucrative fundraising periods followed moments of political contention, such as after a debate loss to Trump on June 27, which brought in approximately $28 million. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump’s camp and associated groups garnered $69 million in the days after his conviction, which caused temporary outages on Trump’s campaign website.
In the first half of the year, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups received $431.2 million. By June’s end, Biden had $281 million in cash reserves compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.