Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform, ActBlue.
According to a live tracker by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, this significant fundraising effort took place over just two days. Although the figures are not officially verified, they reflect ActBlue’s total donations since its inception in 2004. Notably, on Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million toward Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign kickoff, marking the largest fundraising day in the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The second-highest day for donations in recent years was September 30, 2020, following the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
The surge of donations on Sunday also helped ActBlue surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since it was established two decades ago. Its Republican counterpart, WinRed, which began operations in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue reported seeing a wave of first-time donors, expressing excitement over the influx of small-dollar contributors joining the grassroots movement. In addition to this, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors shortly after Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which aims to support the eventual Democratic nominee, raised over $160,000 within the same time frame.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, noted that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Noteworthy Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also pledged their backing for Harris.
Historically, Biden’s fundraising peaks have occurred immediately following significant events, such as after his notable defeat to Trump in a debate on June 27, which brought in about $28 million in two days. Biden raised an additional $19.2 million in the wake of Trump being convicted on 34 felony counts, a period when Trump and his associated groups raised $69 million over a similar timeframe, briefly crashing Trump’s campaign website. During the second quarter of the year, pro-Biden groups amassed $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.