Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million from donors via their primary fundraising platform, ActBlue. This amount was tracked over the past two days by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, using ActBlue’s donation tracker.
On Sunday, donors contributed $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, making it the largest fundraising day in the ActBlue 2024 cycle. The previous record for daily donations was set on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
With the surge in donations, ActBlue reached a milestone of $14 billion raised since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform created in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue highlighted the influx of new donors, stating on social media that many individuals were making their first donations within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement. Additionally, the super PAC Future Forward, which supports Biden, received $150 million in commitments from major donors shortly after the announcement, while Swing Left raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign, predicting it would be “very well financed,” and noted backing from major Democratic donors like George and Alex Soros.
Historically, Biden’s significant fundraising spikes have occurred after major political events; following a debate loss to Trump on June 27, Biden raised about $28 million within the next two days. In the aftermath of Trump’s felony conviction, Biden also raised $19.2 million. Conversely, Trump and his allied groups raised $69 million from the day of his conviction to the following day, with one super PAC associated with him gathering $70 million in May.
From April to June, Biden-aligned groups raised $332.4 million while pro-Trump entities collected $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden’s campaign had $281 million in hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.