Just a day after President Joe Biden announced his decision not to seek re-election, Democrats successfully raised $100 million through its primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue, the political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic entities, reported this total over the past two days. Although the figure is not officially confirmed as it relies on ActBlue’s extensive donation tracker since 2004, it gives insight into the group’s fundraising achievements ahead of any required financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest fundraising day so far in the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The second-highest day for donations recently occurred on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate.
This influx on Sunday also allowed ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue remarked on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, that many new donors were making their first contributions in the last 24 hours, expressing excitement over the influx of grassroots supporters.
Moreover, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in commitments from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which has initiated a fund for the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Evercore founder Roger Altman commented on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Previously, Biden had significant fundraising boosts immediately following his losses to former President Donald Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where he raised about $28 million between that day and June 28, as per a New York Times analysis.
Additionally, Biden raised $19.2 million in the aftermath of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. Trump and his associated groups gathered $69 million from May 30 to May 31 following his conviction, which even resulted in a temporary crash of his campaign website. An aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million in that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups collected $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups brought in $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in funds available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.