Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to fundraising for Democratic organizations, reported this figure over a two-day period through a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project. While this tally is unofficial and based on ActBlue’s own tracking system since 2004, it offers insights into the organization’s fundraising performance ahead of official disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions totaled $66.9 million in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue during the 2024 election cycle. This surpassed the previous record set on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate.
The surge in donations pushed ActBlue’s total fundraising to $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the fundraising platform for Republicans that started in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm on X, formerly Twitter, stating, “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!”
Following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day. Additionally, Swing Left, which aims to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported over $160,000 raised in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, mentioned on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Major Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also expressed their backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden saw significant fundraising success immediately following a televised debate on June 27, where he raised about $28 million in the two days following the event, as per a New York Times analysis. In the aftermath of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliated groups amassed $69 million within a day after his conviction on May 30. The influx of donors temporarily crashed Trump’s campaign website, and an associated super PAC raised $70 million in that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups collected $332.4 million, while pro-Trump organizations raised $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.