Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, recorded this amount over the past two days, according to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy of The Marshall Project. Although this figure is unofficial and reflects ActBlue’s comprehensive donation records since 2004, it gives insight into the group’s fundraising success weeks before formal disclosures are due.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The next highest fundraising day in recent history was September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump participated in their first presidential debate, according to Murphy’s statistics.
As a result of the substantial donations on Sunday, ActBlue has now raised $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican equivalent that launched in late 2019, has garnered about $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue stated on X, formerly Twitter, that they have seen many donors making their first contributions in the last 24 hours. They expressed excitement over the influx of new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots movement.
In addition to ActBlue’s success, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in fresh commitments from major donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which formed a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Monday, Evercore founder Roger Altman expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign, stating that it will be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown support for Harris.
Previously, Biden experienced his best days for fundraising right after being defeated by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, raising approximately $28 million between that day and June 28, as per a New York Times analysis.
Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million from May 30 to May 31. This surge in donations caused Trump’s campaign website to briefly crash. An allied super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump organizations amassed $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.