Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised an impressive $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, logged this amount over the past two days, as reported by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. Although the figure is unofficial and based on ActBlue’s own donation tracker from 2004, it highlights the group’s fundraising success just weeks before required disclosure reports are due.
On Sunday alone, contributors brought in $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising event for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The second-largest day for donations was on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
This substantial influx of donations allowed ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total cash raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the fundraising platform for Republicans that was launched in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue stated on X, formerly known as Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first donation in the last 24 hours, expressing excitement over new small-dollar contributors joining the grassroots movement.
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Meanwhile, Swing Left, which has initiated a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, indicated to Agence France-Presse that it raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, commented on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also shown their backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising activity right after being outperformed by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, raising about $28 million from that day until June 28, as noted in a New York Times analysis. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges, Biden raised $19.2 million within the following days. Conversely, Trump and his affiliated groups garnered $69 million from May 30 to May 31, causing a brief crash of his campaign website. Additionally, the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations accumulated $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.