Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not be running for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported this amount over the past two days according to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. Although the figure is unofficial and based on ActBlue’s own tracker of total donations since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising success prior to upcoming disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to launch Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, setting a record for the largest fundraising day in the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The previous benchmark for donations was on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
With the surge of donations on Sunday, ActBlue reached a milestone of $14 billion in funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican equivalent launched in late 2019, has raised around $4.3 billion since its establishment.
ActBlue expressed excitement over the influx of new donors, stating, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first-ever donation in the last 24 hours! It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Swing Left, which has established a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, announced it raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, indicated Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her candidacy. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also pledged their backing to Harris.
In previous fundraising efforts, Biden had significant success after being defeated in a televised debate by former President Donald Trump on June 27, raising approximately $28 million within the following days. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and associated groups raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, leading to temporary crashes of Trump’s campaign website. The super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. collected $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups garnered $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.