A day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised an impressive $100 million through ActBlue, their primary fundraising platform.
In the past two days, ActBlue recorded this amount, as tracked by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official, it gives an early indication of fundraising success prior to any formal reports.
On Sunday alone, donations surged to $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, making it the largest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The previous record was on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
With this influx of contributions, ActBlue reached a milestone of $14 billion raised since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, its Republican counterpart launched in late 2019, has collected around $4.3 billion.
ActBlue expressed excitement about the number of first-time donors, stating on X, formerly Twitter, that the new small-dollar donors invigorate the grassroots movement.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC supporting Biden, reportedly garnered $150 million from major donors shortly after Biden’s announcement endorsing Harris. Swing Left, also backing the Democratic nominee, claimed it raised over $160,000 in just 24 hours.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, emphasized that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and announced his support for her. High-profile Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also thrown their support behind Harris.
In terms of previous fundraising efforts, Biden experienced considerable success following his defeat by Trump during a debate in June 2020 when he raised around $28 million. He also raised $19.2 million after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, while Trump and his affiliates collected $69 million during the same period, momentarily overwhelming his campaign website. In the broader context from April to June, pro-Biden groups amassed $332.4 million, compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump factions. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million on hand, while Trump had $336.2 million.