Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to fundraising for Democratic organizations, reported this amount over the recent two days, based on a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While this figure is unofficial and reflects ActBlue’s comprehensive donation data since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday, donors contributed $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the most significant fundraising day in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous high for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s data.
Due to the sizable donations over the weekend, ActBlue reached a milestone of $14 billion raised since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that began in late 2019, has accumulated around $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue stated on X, which was formerly known as Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first-ever donations in the last 24 hours. The message emphasized the excitement of seeing new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots movement.
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from prominent donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement endorsing Harris, according to Politico. Additionally, Swing Left, which has initiated a fund to support the Democratic nominee, informed Agence France-Presse it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
On Monday, Evercore founder Roger Altman indicated that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Major Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Biden’s previous fundraising successes typically followed significant political events. For instance, directly after a debate loss to Trump on June 27, Biden and his teams raised about $28 million in just two days. Following Trump’s conviction on felony charges, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliates collected $69 million during a two-day period surrounding his conviction, with Trump’s campaign site briefly crashing due to the influx of donations. An associated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups amassed $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in available funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.