Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors via their primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy of The Marshall Project, ActBlue, which serves as a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, recorded this significant amount over the past two days. While the tally is unofficial and based on ActBlue’s mega-tracker, it reflects the group’s fundraising achievements ahead of required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the largest single fundraising day in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record for donations was set on September 30, 2020, when Biden debated Trump for the first time.
The recent surge in donations also helped ActBlue surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has raised about $4.3 billion.
In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, ActBlue noted, “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!”
Future Forward, a super PAC supporting Biden, reportedly received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and Harris’s endorsement. Additionally, Swing Left announced it raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, the founder of Evercore, expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign, stating it will be “very well financed,” and emphasized his support for her. Notable Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also supported Harris.
Previous fundraising spikes for Biden occurred after he faced defeat by Trump during a debate on June 27, with Biden and his committees raising approximately $28 million shortly after. Additionally, Biden raised $19.2 million following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. In comparison, Trump and his affiliates raised $69 million in the days surrounding his conviction, which caused brief outages on his campaign website. The super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. secured $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.