Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million from donors via ActBlue, the primary fundraising platform for Democratic organizations. This impressive amount was recorded over a two-day period, as noted by Ryan Murphy, a developer for The Marshall Project, using a live tracker maintained by ActBlue. Though the figure is not officially verified, it reflects the fundraising activities ahead of required reporting deadlines.
On Sunday, donations reached $66.9 million following the kick-off of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the highest single-day fundraising total for the upcoming 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. For comparison, the second-highest day for donations was September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
With the surge in donations, ActBlue announced that it has raised a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising counterpart launched in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement about the influx of new donors, reporting that many individuals made their first contributions in the last 24 hours, which they described as a motivating sign of grassroots support.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reportedly received $150 million in new commitments from significant donors within 24 hours of the announcement. Swing Left, which aims to support the upcoming Democratic nominee, shared that it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, commented that Harris’s campaign is poised to be “very well financed” and announced his backing. High-profile Democratic donors like George and Alex Soros have also pledged their support to Harris.
Historically, Biden’s prominent fundraising days followed significant events, such as a televised debate loss to Trump, when he and his affiliates raised around $28 million over a two-day span. After Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, Biden saw a $19.2 million increase in donations, while Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million during a similar time frame, causing a brief crash of Trump’s campaign website. In May, Trump’s associated super PAC garnered $70 million.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups amassed $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in his campaign fund compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.