Just one day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not seek re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from contributors through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic organizations, reported this amount over the past two days, as per a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While the figure has not been officially verified, it draws from ActBlue’s extensive donation records since its inception in 2004, offering insight into their fundraising performance weeks ahead of the required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donations reached $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign launch, marking the largest single-day fundraising effort for ActBlue during the 2024 election cycle. The previous record for daily donations was set on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Thanks to this surge in contributions, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that began in late 2019, has collected around $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue reported a significant uptick in first-time donations in the last 24 hours, expressing enthusiasm on social media about the influx of new small-dollar contributors joining the grassroots movement.
In the wake of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from prominent donors within a day. Additionally, Swing Left, which initiated a fund supporting the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Major Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also shown their backing for Harris.
Historically, Biden has seen significant fundraising boosts following politically charged events. After a debate loss to Trump on June 27, Biden raised around $28 million in the following days. He also secured $19.2 million shortly after Trump faced criminal charges. Trump’s campaign saw a remarkable $69 million influx from May 30 to May 31, prompting temporary crashes on his campaign website. In the same month, the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million.
From April to June, groups supporting Biden amassed $332.4 million, while those backing Trump collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.