Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, the Democratic Party secured $100 million from donors using its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that facilitates fundraising for Democratic organizations, reported this amount collected over the past two days through a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official and relies on ActBlue’s own tracking since 2004, it reflects the group’s fundraising prowess just weeks ahead of required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donations reached $66.9 million in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising event in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record was on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
The influx of donations allowed ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, its Republican counterpart, WinRed, which began collecting donations in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue’s statement on social media indicated a surge of new donors, highlighting that many were making their first contributions within the last 24 hours. “It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!” the organization stated.
Additionally, Future Forward, a pro-Biden super PAC, secured $150 million in new commitments from significant donors within a day following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 within 24 hours to support the eventual Democratic nominee.
Evercore’s founder Roger Altman expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign, stating it would be “very well financed” and affirmed his support for her candidacy. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden saw significant fundraising after being outmatched by Trump during a debate on June 27, when he and his committees raised about $28 million in a day. He also collected $19.2 million following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, while Trump and his affiliates gathered $69 million in the days after the conviction. Trump’s campaign website experienced an outage due to the surge in donations. An allied super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that same month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden initiatives garnered $332.4 million compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump efforts. By the end of June, Biden’s campaign had $281 million on hand, while Trump had $336.2 million.