Just a day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not pursue re-election, Democrats successfully raised $100 million from contributors through its primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project, ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to fundraising for Democratic entities, recorded this amount over the last two days. While the figure is preliminary—predicated on ActBlue’s comprehensive donation data since 2004—it offers insight into the organization’s fundraising efforts prior to any obligatory financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to kickstart Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising haul for the 2024 election cycle on ActBlue. The previous record for donations in recent times was set on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy.
This surge in donations allowed ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform launched in late 2019, has garnered about $4.3 billion to date.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm in a statement released on X, formerly Twitter, stating that many individuals reported making their first donations in the previous 24 hours. “It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!” the platform remarked.
In addition to ActBlue’s success, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, raised $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, according to Politico. Meanwhile, Swing Left, a group that initiated a fund for supporting the eventual Democratic nominee, indicated to Agence France-Presse that it raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, the founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and affirmed his backing for her. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their support for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s peak fundraising days occurred immediately after he faced a significant defeat by Donald Trump during a televised debate on June 27, when he and his committees raised around $28 million in just over a day, as reported by the New York Times.
Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the days thereafter, while Trump and his affiliated groups amassed $69 million from May 30 to May 31. The surge in donors temporarily crashed Trump’s campaign website. Additionally, the super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, groups supporting Biden collected a total of $332.4 million, compared to $431.2 million raised by groups backing Trump, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, while Trump had $336.2 million on hand.