Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, which serves as a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic initiatives, reported the total raised in a two-day span, according to a real-time tracker created by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official and is based on ActBlue’s internal records since 2004, it offers insight into the fundraising dynamics just weeks before mandatory disclosures are due.
On the previous Sunday alone, donations to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign reached $66.9 million, marking the most successful fundraising day of the current election cycle for ActBlue. This surpassed the previous notable day on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
As a result of the surge in donations, ActBlue celebrated crossing the $14 billion mark in funds raised since it was established two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has collected about $4.3 billion.
ActBlue highlighted that many people reported making their first-ever donations within the last 24 hours, expressing excitement over the influx of new small-dollar contributors to the grassroots movement.
Additionally, 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. Similarly, Swing Left, which was created to support the eventual Democratic nominee, announced it raised over $160,000 within the same time frame.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that he anticipates Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Democratic mega-donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their backing for Harris.
Historically, Biden has experienced notable fundraising spikes following significant events. For instance, he raised around $28 million in the aftermath of his defeat by Trump during a televised debate on June 27. In the wake of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his associated groups garnered $69 million over a similar timeframe, which even caused a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. An affiliated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
Data between April and June indicated that pro-Biden groups collected $332.4 million, as opposed to the $431.2 million accumulated by pro-Trump groups. By the end of June, Biden was reported to have $281 million in funds available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.