Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised an impressive $100 million through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to fundraising for Democratic initiatives, reported this impressive sum over the past two days via a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this figure is not officially verified and is based on ActBlue’s comprehensive donation monitor, it offers insight into fundraising performance ahead of mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions reached $66.9 million, coinciding with the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the busiest fundraising day for ActBlue in the 2024 electoral cycle. The previous record for donations was on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s data.
This surge in donations allowed ActBlue to reach a monumental milestone of $14 billion raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising counterpart launched in late 2019, has accumulated approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement about the influx of new contributors, 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!”
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in commitments from key donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and Harris’s endorsement. Meanwhile, Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 in just one day to support the eventual Democratic nominee, as shared with Agence France-Presse.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her candidacy. Notably, Democratic mega-donors George and Alex Soros have also lent their support to Harris.
Biden previously raised significant funds after a challenging debate against former president Donald Trump on June 27, bringing in about $28 million from June 27 to June 28, as reported by a New York Times analysis.
Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the following days, while Trump and his allies amassed $69 million between May 30 and May 31, a response that briefly overwhelmed Trump’s campaign website. His affiliated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups collected $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups garnered $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden’s fundraising efforts left him with $281 million, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.