Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not be running for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through their primary fundraising platform. ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to fundraising for Democratic groups, noted this amount was collected over the past two days, as per a live tracker by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. Although not officially verified, this figure reflects donations since 2004 and offers insight into the fundraising momentum ahead of official reporting deadlines.
On Sunday alone, contributors provided $66.9 million in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 cycle on ActBlue. This eclipses previous significant fundraising days, such as September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
The influx of donations on Sunday enabled ActBlue to surpass a total of $14 billion raised since its inception twenty years ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform established in late 2019, has accumulated around $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue noted the remarkable response to Harris’s campaign, stating, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours! It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
Following Biden’s endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with the president, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day, according to Politico. Meanwhile, Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 to support the eventual Democratic nominee within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and voiced his support. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also pledged their backing for her campaign.
Historically, Biden’s fundraising peaks occurred shortly after significant events, such as a televised debate with Trump that led to approximately $28 million raised between June 27 and June 28, following a notable defeat. In the aftermath of Trump’s conviction on multiple felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and related organizations collected $69 million from May 30 to May 31, causing a temporary crash of his campaign website. A super PAC supporting Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden entities raised $332.4 million, compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump organizations, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden’s campaign held $281 million, while Trump’s campaign had $336.2 million in funds available.