Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic organizations, recorded this amount over the past two days according to a real-time tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. Although these figures are not official — as they stem from ActBlue’s comprehensive donation tracker since its inception in 2004 — they offer insight into the fundraising momentum ahead of required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest fundraising day in the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The previous notable fundraising day occurred on September 30, 2020, when Biden faced Trump in the first presidential debate, as noted by Murphy.
The surge in donations allowed ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total contributions since its founding two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising entity launched in late 2019, has amassed approximately $4.3 billion in donations, according to data from OpenSecrets.
ActBlue remarked on X, formerly known as Twitter, highlighting the influx of new donors: “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!”
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Swing Left, which established a fund backing the eventual Democratic nominee, announced it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed his support for Harris’s campaign on Monday, stating it would be “very well financed.” Notable Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also backed her campaign.
Previously, Biden’s most successful fundraising days occurred right after he was notably defeated by Trump in a televised debate on June 27, during which Biden and his committees raised approximately $28 million from that day until June 28, according to a New York Times analysis.
Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the days after, while Trump and his affiliated groups gathered $69 million between May 30 and May 31, causing a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. The related super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. reported raising $70 million that month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden groups raised a total of $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups collected $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.