Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, Democrats raised a remarkable $100 million from donors using their primary fundraising platform, ActBlue. This figure was recorded over the past two days, according to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this tally is not official and reflects donations since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of the required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking ActBlue’s highest fundraising day for the 2024 election cycle. The previous peak occurred on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as per Murphy’s tracker.
With this recent influx of donations, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising counterpart launched in late 2019, has gathered around $4.3 billion to date, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement about the surge in contributions, noting, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours!” The statement, made on X (formerly Twitter), highlighted the impact of new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots effort.
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in fresh commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and Harris’s endorsement. Another group, Swing Left, mentioned raising over $160,000 in just a day to support the eventual Democratic nominee.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and affirmed his support for her. Major Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also expressed their backing for Harris.
Biden’s strongest previous fundraising days followed a notable loss against Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where his committees raised approximately $28 million within 24 hours. Moreover, Biden garnered $19.2 million after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, while Trump and his allied organizations raised $69 million between May 30 and 31, prompting a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. The super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
Between April and June, groups supporting Biden raised $332.4 million, compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump groups, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand, while Trump had $336.2 million.