Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats successfully raised $100 million through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising tool for Democratic organizations, recorded this impressive figure over a two-day period, as documented by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this tally is not officially verified—it is based on ActBlue’s ongoing donation tracker since 2004—it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of any mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, marking the largest single-day fundraising effort for the 2024 cycle via ActBlue. The previous record for donations in recent history was set on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
The surge in donations has allowed ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its launch two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, which serves as the Republican counterpart and started in late 2019, has raised around $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue announced on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday that many individuals reported making their first-ever donations in the past 24 hours. The organization expressed enthusiasm about the influx of new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots movement.
In the wake of Biden’s announcement and his subsequent endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from significant donors within 24 hours. Additionally, Swing Left, which initiated 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 would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her candidacy. Major Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also thrown their support behind Harris.
Biden’s previous notable fundraising episodes occurred directly after being soundly defeated by Trump during a televised debate on June 27. Between that date and June 28, Biden and his committees raised approximately $28 million, according to a New York Times analysis.
Furthermore, Biden raised $19.2 million in the days following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges. In contrast, Trump and his affiliated organizations garnered $69 million from May 30 to May 31, triggering a temporary crash of his campaign website. The associated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump entities collected $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in available funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.