Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats secured $100 million in donations through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee focused on fundraising for Democratic groups, recorded this impressive sum over the past two days, as reported by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While the total is not officially verified and derives from ActBlue’s comprehensive donation tracker initiated in 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donations reached $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The second-highest single-day contributions occurred on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s tracking data.
With the remarkable influx of donations on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised over two decades of operation. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform launched in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion to date, according to OpenSecrets.
In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, ActBlue remarked on the influx of new donors, saying, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours! It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
Following Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from prominent donors within 24 hours, as reported by Politico. Additionally, the organization Swing Left, which began a fund to support the future Democratic nominee, indicated it raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed his belief on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also shown their backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising activity shortly after a challenging televised debate with Trump on June 27, raising around $28 million in the subsequent two days. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden garnered $19.2 million in donations, while Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million during the days following his conviction on May 30.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups amassed $332.4 million, in contrast to the $431.2 million raised by pro-Trump groups, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, while Trump had $336.2 million on hand.