Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that serves Democratic groups, reported this significant funding over the past two days, as tracked by Ryan Murphy, a developer with The Marshall Project. While this amount is not yet official, as it is based on ActBlue’s internal tracking since its inception in 2004, it offers insights into fundraising activities ahead of formal disclosure reports.
On Sunday alone, contributors provided $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, representing the largest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The previous record for donations was set on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate.
With this recent influx of donations, ActBlue reached a milestone of $14 billion raised since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising counterpart that started in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue remarked on social media, “We’ve seen so many people 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!”
Following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours. Additionally, Swing Left, which formed a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Notable Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s fundraising peaked shortly after he faced a significant defeat against Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where he and his committees raised around $28 million in just two days. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his supporting groups collected $69 million in the 24 hours after the verdict, causing a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. In the same period, the super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., amassed $70 million.
Between April and June, groups supporting Biden collected $332.4 million, while those backing Trump garnered $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By June’s end, Biden had $281 million in available funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.