Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats secured $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project, ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic initiatives, documented this fundraising achievement over the last two days. While the figure isn’t official, as it’s based on ActBlue’s tracking system established since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s financial performance ahead of any forthcoming disclosures.
On the first day alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to launch Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the most successful fundraising day for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The previous high point was on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate.
As a result of the donation surge, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, its Republican equivalent, WinRed, which started in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, as reported by OpenSecrets.
ActBlue shared on X, formerly Twitter, that it has seen a notable influx of first-time donors in the past 24 hours, expressing enthusiasm about the growth of grassroots support.
Additionally, Future Forward, a Biden-supported super PAC, reportedly acquired $150 million in new commitments from major donors shortly after Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which has established a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, indicated that it raised over $160,000 within the same 24-hour period.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, emphasized on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his backing for her candidacy. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also shown support for Harris.
Biden’s previous notable fundraising days occurred right after he faced a substantial defeat to Trump in a televised debate on June 27, during which he and his committees garnered around $28 million in just one day. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the days that followed, while Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million from May 30 to May 31, briefly causing a crash on his campaign website. The super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million during that month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden organizations secured $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups gathered $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in available funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.