Following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he will not pursue re-election, Democrats have raised an impressive $100 million from donors via their primary fundraising platform, ActBlue.
According to a real-time tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project, this substantial amount was recorded over the past two days. While this figure is not officially verified, it reflects overall fundraising progress since ActBlue’s inception in 2004, providing preliminary insights ahead of the required financial disclosures.
On a single day, Sunday, donations totaled $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking a record high for fundraising in the ongoing 2024 cycle on the ActBlue platform. This surpassed the previous significant day for contributions, which occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Thanks to the recent influx of donations, ActBlue has now surpassed $14 billion raised in two decades of operation. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that began its operations in late 2019, has collected about $4.3 billion.
ActBlue reported a surge of first-time donors in the past 24 hours, expressing excitement over the influx of small-dollar contributors joining the grassroots movement.
Moreover, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, garnered $150 million in new commitments from major donors shortly after Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Additionally, the organization Swing Left, which has initiated fundraising efforts for the future Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, commented that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed,” and significant Democratic benefactors such as George and Alex Soros have also pledged their support.
Historically, Biden’s most lucrative fundraising moments were after significant debates, including a June 27 encounter with Trump that resulted in $28 million raised within a day. Following Trump’s criminal conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliates collected $69 million immediately after the conviction date. Trump’s campaign website experienced a brief crash due to the surge of donors.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, leaving Biden with $281 million on hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million by the end of June.