Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported this impressive total over the past two days, according to a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. Though the figures are not official and stem from ActBlue’s tracking of total donations since its inception in 2004, they offer insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of the upcoming financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking ActBlue’s largest single-day fundraising effort for the 2024 election cycle. The previous high for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump squared off in their first presidential debate.
This surge allowed ActBlue to surpass a significant milestone, reaching $14 billion raised since it was established two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has accumulated approximately $4.3 billion in donations, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm for the new small-dollar donors joining their movement, noting an influx of individuals claiming they made their first donation within the last 24 hours.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which set up a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising more than $160,000 in the same time frame.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and pledged his backing. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also expressed support for Harris.
Historically, Biden’s fundraising peaked after intense moments, such as a public debate loss to Donald Trump, where Biden and his committees raised roughly $28 million in the day following the event. Furthermore, in the wake of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his associated organizations managed to bring in $69 million in one day after his conviction.
Between April and June, pro-Biden groups raised a total of $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden’s campaign had $281 million on hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.