Just a day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors through its primary fundraising platform, ActBlue.
According to a live tracker maintained by developer Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project, this amount was amassed over the past two days, although it is not an official total. ActBlue’s tracker has monitored aggregate donations since 2004, providing insight into recent fundraising efforts ahead of formal disclosure deadlines.
On Sunday alone, contributions soared to $66.9 million to kickstart Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising effort in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous high for daily donations was recorded on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as per Murphy’s records.
This fundraising surge allowed ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue reported a significant increase in first-time donors, expressing enthusiasm in a statement on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday afternoon. They noted, “It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors shortly after Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, according to Politico. Swing Left, which supports the eventual Democratic nominee, claimed to have raised over $160,000 within 24 hours.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed his belief that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed,” and noted his support for her. Major Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also backed Harris.
In earlier fundraising rounds, Biden had notable success immediately following his defeat by former President Donald Trump during a televised debate. Between June 27 and June 28, Biden and his associated committees raised around $28 million. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his allied groups brought in $69 million from May 30 to May 31, leading to a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website due to high donor traffic. Additionally, Trump’s affiliated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups accumulated $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups garnered $431.2 million. At the end of June, Biden’s campaign had $281 million in hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.