Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats succeeded in raising $100 million through their primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project, ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to fundraising for Democratic organizations, reported this substantial amount accumulated over two days. Although this figure is not officially confirmed—being derived from ActBlue’s own tracker, which has been operational since 2004—it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of mandated disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to launch Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. This figure surpasses the previous high, which occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
As a result of the surge in donations, ActBlue reached the milestone of $14 billion raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform established in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue noted on X, formerly Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first donations within the past 24 hours, emphasizing the encouraging nature of attracting new small-dollar contributors to the grassroots movement.
Following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, the super PAC aligned with Biden, Future Forward, secured $150 million in commitments from major donors within 24 hours. Meanwhile, Swing Left, which initiated a fund for the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within that same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign, stating it will be “very well financed” and confirmed his support. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also shown their backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most significant fundraising days followed his defeat to Trump in a debate on June 27, where he and his committees raised approximately $28 million in the following days. In the wake of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden was able to raise $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliates amassed $69 million shortly after his conviction in late May, even causing a temporary crash of his campaign website. An associated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million during that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised a total of $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the close of June, Biden had $281 million available, while Trump held $336.2 million.