Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, Democrats amassed $100 million in donations through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee supporting Democratic initiatives, tracked this impressive sum over the previous two days, as reported by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this tally is based on ActBlue’s cumulative donation figures since 2004 and is not considered official, it offers insight into the organization’s fundraising success in advance of mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, supporters contributed $66.9 million to launch Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 election cycle via ActBlue. The second-highest day in recent memory was September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate, according to Murphy’s tracker.
The influx of donations on Sunday also brought ActBlue’s total raised since its inception to $14 billion. In comparison, its Republican counterpart, WinRed, which started in late 2019, has raised around $4.3 billion according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue noted a significant number of individuals claimed they made their first donation within the last 24 hours, expressing enthusiasm about welcoming new small-dollar contributors into the grassroots movement.
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from significant donors in the 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Additionally, Swing Left, which launched a fund in support of the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 shortly after the announcement.
Evercore founder Roger Altman remarked on Monday that Harris’s campaign is poised for strong financial backing and affirmed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also expressed their backing of Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most successful fundraising days occurred shortly after a June 27 televised debate in which he faced criticism from Trump. During that period, Biden and his associated committees raised about $28 million within a day. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the ensuing days, while Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, causing a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. The super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that same month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden organizations brought in $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups accumulated $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the close of June, Biden had $281 million on hand, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.