Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million from donors via their primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by developer Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project, ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, achieved this sum in the past two days. While the numbers are not officially verified—being based on ActBlue’s own record of total donations since 2004—they offer a glimpse into the group’s fundraising successes ahead of upcoming financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions totaled $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. This surpassed the previous high, which occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
The fundraising surge pushed ActBlue’s overall total raised to $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, its Republican counterpart WinRed, established in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement about the influx of new donors in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. “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!”
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from significant donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and support for Harris. Swing Left, which launched a fund to back the eventual Democratic nominee, also reported raising over $160,000 in 24 hours.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated that he believes Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed,” and noted his support for her. Notable Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also thrown their weight behind Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most lucrative fundraising days occurred immediately following a debate where he was decisively defeated by Trump on June 27, which resulted in about $28 million raised in just two days. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliates brought in $69 million in the immediate aftermath, causing a temporary crash of his campaign website. The super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
In the broader fundraising landscape, pro-Biden groups collected $332.4 million between April and June, while pro-Trump groups garnered $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in funds, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.