Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised an impressive $100 million from donors using their primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project, the fundraising platform ActBlue, which supports Democratic organizations, recorded this total over a two-day period. Though this figure is not official, as it comes from ActBlue’s internal mega-tracker that has compiled donation data since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising capabilities ahead of upcoming disclosure deadlines.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to kickstart Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous high was on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Thanks to this surge in donations, ActBlue has now raised $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, its Republican counterpart, WinRed, which began operations in late 2019, has accumulated approximately $4.3 billion, as reported by OpenSecrets.
“We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first-ever donation in the last 24 hours!” ActBlue stated in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday afternoon. “It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC supporting Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris, according to Politico. Swing Left, which was established to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported to Agence France-Presse that it raised more than $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed his belief on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Prominent Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also voiced their support for Harris.
Biden’s strongest fundraising days previously occurred after he faced a loss to Trump during a televised debate on June 27, raising approximately $28 million in the following 24 hours, as analyzed by the New York Times.
In contrast, Biden raised $19.2 million shortly after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, while Trump and his affiliated groups generated $69 million in the two days following his conviction on May 30. This spike in donations even caused a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. The aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised an additional $70 million that same month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups amassed $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million on hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.