Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors via their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to Democratic fundraising, reported the significant amount over the last two days, according to a live tracker managed by developer Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project. While these figures are not official and are drawn from ActBlue’s own accumulated data since 2004, they illustrate the fundraising success just weeks prior to mandatory financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions totaled $66.9 million following the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest single-day fundraising effort in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record was set on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s tracker.
With these donations, ActBlue reached a milestone of $14 billion raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican counterpart that started in late 2019, has raised around $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement over the influx of first-time donors, stating, “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!”
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, garnered $150 million in new commitments from major donors shortly after Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Meanwhile, Swing Left, which established a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, raised over $160,000 in just a day.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, indicated on Monday that Harris’s campaign is set to be “very well financed” and committed to supporting her. Democratic benefactors George and Alex Soros have also shown their support for Harris.
Historically, Biden’s peak fundraising days occurred after he faced a significant defeat to Trump during a televised debate on June 27, when Biden and his committees raised approximately $28 million over two days. In the wake of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden generated $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliates raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, even causing a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. The super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. also raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump groups. By the end of June, Biden’s campaign had $281 million in hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.