Just a day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through ActBlue, their primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue reported this significant amount over the last two days. While this figure is unofficial and drawn from ActBlue’s donation history since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of required financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, supporters contributed $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the most successful fundraising day in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record was set on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Due to the donation surge on Sunday, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, its Republican counterpart, WinRed, which started in late 2019, has raised around $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement about the influx of donations, stating on X, previously Twitter, that many people shared they had made their first-ever contribution in the last 24 hours. They emphasized the encouraging trend of new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots effort.
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Meanwhile, Swing Left raised over $160,000 in support of the eventual Democratic nominee within the same timeframe, according to the Agence France-Presse.
Evercore founder Roger Altman projected on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be well-funded and expressed his support for her candidacy. Democratic powerhouse donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their backing for Harris.
Previously, some of Biden’s most lucrative fundraising days occurred after he faced off against Donald Trump in a televised debate on June 27, where Biden and his committees garnered around $28 million in just two days. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliates collected $69 million in a similar timeframe, leading to a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. The aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, groups supporting Biden raised $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump factions brought in $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million at his disposal compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.