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 created by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue, the political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic groups, recorded this amount over the last two days. While this figure isn’t official, as it’s based on ActBlue’s internal tracking since 2004, it offers insight into fundraising performance ahead of mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day for ActBlue during the 2024 election cycle. The second-highest daily revenue was recorded on September 30, 2020, during the first debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s data.
Due to this surge in donations, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. Conversely, WinRed, the Republican counterpart established in late 2019, has gathered about $4.3 billion, as reported by OpenSecrets.
ActBlue shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday afternoon, “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 announcement and endorsement of Harris, the Biden-aligned super PAC Future Forward reportedly secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours. Swing Left, which initiated a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, announced it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and expressed his support. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also pledged their support to Harris.
Biden had previously seen substantial fundraising responses right after being defeated by Trump in a televised debate on June 27, where his committees raised approximately $28 million in the following day.
Additionally, Biden raised $19.2 million in the days following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. Trump and his allied groups raised $69 million from the day of his conviction—May 30—to May 31, momentarily crashing his campaign website. The aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., secured $70 million that month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups obtained $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.