Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors via their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported this amount over a two-day period, according to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While this total is not official, it reflects fundraising activities leading up to required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million to kickstart Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the highest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The previous record for daily donations was on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
The recent surge pushed ActBlue’s total fundraising to $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, its Republican counterpart, has raised approximately $4.3 billion since launching in late 2019.
“We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours!” ActBlue stated on X, previously known as Twitter. “It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors just 24 hours after Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris, according to Politico. Swing Left, which started a fund supporting the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and showed his support for her. Major Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also thrown their backing behind Harris.
Historically, Biden’s most significant fundraising days occurred after he was outperformed by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, which helped him and his committees gather about $28 million in the following days. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliates raised $69 million in the immediate days thereafter, leading to a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. The super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups amassed $332.4 million, while pro-Trump organizations raised $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.