Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported this figure over the past two days via a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While this total is not official and relies on ActBlue’s internal mega-tracker since 2004, it sheds light on the group’s fundraising performance ahead of upcoming disclosure requirements.
On Sunday, donors contributed $66.9 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the largest single-day fundraising event for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The previous high point for donations was on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s findings.
This influx of donations allowed ActBlue to reach $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has garnered approximately $4.3 billion in donations.
ActBlue remarked on X, formerly Twitter, that numerous individuals reported making their first-ever contributions in the last 24 hours, expressing excitement about the influx of new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots initiative.
Following Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from significant donors within 24 hours. Additionally, Swing Left, which supports the eventual Democratic nominee, raised over $160,000 in the same time frame, as reported by Agence France-Presse.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, indicated that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and expressed his support. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their backing for Harris.
Biden’s past notable fundraising moments occurred following his defeats against Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where he and his committees raised around $28 million within a day. Additionally, he amassed $19.2 million in the aftermath of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges. During that period, Trump and his aligned groups raised $69 million between May 30 and May 31, which briefly caused a crash on Trump’s campaign website. An associated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden groups raised a total of $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in his campaign coffers compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.