Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic initiatives, reported this figure over a two-day period, according to Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, who monitors their fundraising efforts. Although the total is unofficial and based on ActBlue’s self-maintained tracker, it gives insight into the organization’s fundraising activity ahead of formal reports.
On the preceding Sunday, donors contributed $66.9 million to launch Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, setting a record for donations in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record for the second-highest daily donations was on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
With this latest surge in donations, ActBlue has now raised $14 billion since its inception two decades ago, while Republicans’ WinRed, which started in late 2019, has garnered approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm about the influx of contributions, noting that many individuals reported making their first donation in the last day.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in commitments from major donors shortly after Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left also reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, indicated that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Major Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also expressed their backing for Harris.
In the past, Biden’s fundraising spiked after his debate loss to Trump on June 27, leading to about $28 million raised in the subsequent days. Following Trump’s indictment on 34 felony counts, Biden accumulated $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliated groups raised a significant $69 million within a day of the indictment.
Overall, from April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, leaving Biden with $281 million in cash compared to Trump’s $336.2 million by the end of June.