Just a day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not pursue re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors via its main fundraising platform.
According to Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, the political action committee ActBlue reported this amount collected over the past two days. While this total is not official—it is based on ActBlue’s mega-tracker established in 2004—it offers insights into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of official disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions reached $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day in the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. This surpassed previous records, the second highest being recorded on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump held their first presidential debate.
As a result of the significant donations on Sunday, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its inception 20 years ago. In contrast, WinRed, the fundraising counterpart for Republicans which launched in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue announced via a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first-ever donations in the last 24 hours, expressing enthusiasm about the influx of new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots movement.
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Meanwhile, Swing Left reported that it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe to support the eventual Democratic nominee.
Roger Altman, the founder of Evercore, indicated that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also endorsed Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most successful fundraising days occurred immediately after a dispute with Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where he and his committees raised approximately $28 million within 24 hours. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the days after, while Trump and his associated groups collected $69 million from May 30 to May 31, briefly crashing his campaign website. Additionally, a supporting super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups amassed $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump entities raised $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.