Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million from donors through ActBlue, their primary fundraising platform.
According to Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, this impressive figure was recorded over a two-day period, although it remains unofficial as it is based on ActBlue’s own mega-tracker of donations since 2004. This data offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of formal disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the largest single day of fundraising in the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The previous record for one of the highest donation days occurred on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate.
As a result of the surge in donations on Sunday, ActBlue has raised a total of $14 billion since it began operating two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, its Republican counterpart that started in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm about the influx of new donors, stating, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours!” They highlighted the motivation from new small-dollar contributors joining the grassroots movement.
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors following Biden’s announcement and Harris’s endorsement, as reported by Politico. Swing Left, which created a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, announced it raised over $160,000 within 24 hours.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, remarked on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and offered his support. Notable Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also expressed backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s strongest fundraising days occurred shortly after he faced a significant defeat against Trump during a televised debate on June 27, raising about $28 million by the next day, according to a New York Times analysis.
Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the subsequent days. In contrast, Trump and affiliated groups garnered $69 million from May 30 to May 31, which led to a momentary crash of Trump’s campaign website due to the rush of donations. The super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations collected $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups brought in $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.