Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not be pursuing re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through their primary fundraising outlet.
According to Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to fundraising for Democratic organizations, tracked this impressive sum over the last two days. While this tally is not official and relies on ActBlue’s donations mega-tracker that has been in use since 2004, it offers valuable insights into the fundraising performance before any official disclosures are made.
On a single day, Sunday, donors contributed $66.9 million as part of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the most significant fundraising day for ActBlue in the 2024 electoral cycle. The previous high for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, the day of the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
This influx of donations pushed ActBlue’s total funds raised to $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, its Republican counterpart, WinRed, which started gathering funds in late 2019, has raised roughly $4.3 billion based on data from OpenSecrets.
On Monday afternoon, ActBlue announced on X, previously known as Twitter, that many donors proclaimed this was their first-ever contribution: “It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
Within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, garnered $150 million in new commitments from significant donors, according to Politico. Additionally, Swing Left, which initiated a fund in support of the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, the founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that he believes Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and declared his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, are also backing her campaign.
Historically, Biden’s most profitable fundraising moments followed his notable defeats to Trump, such as the televised debate on June 27, where he and his committees raised around $28 million from that day to June 28, according to a New York Times analysis.
Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his associated groups collected $69 million in the days from May 30 to May 31, which even led to a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. Trump-aligned super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million that month.
Reports indicate that between April and June, pro-Biden groups accumulated $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups received $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the close of June, Biden had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.