Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party managed to raise $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, recorded this amount over two days. Although these figures are not officially verified and are based on ActBlue’s historical donation data since 2004, they offer insight into the fundraising performance ahead of the mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million to launch Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest fundraising day of the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. This surpasses the previous high, recorded on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate.
The impressive donations on Sunday propelled ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican counterpart that started in late 2019, has accumulated approximately $4.3 billion in donations, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue reported a surge of first-time donors, stating, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours!” This influx of small-dollar contributions is seen as a motivator for the grassroots movement.
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC supporting Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from prominent donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Another group, Swing Left, which started a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in just one day.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign, stating it would be “very well financed,” and noted backing from notable Democratic donors such as George and Alex Soros.
Biden’s fundraising has seen significant boosts in the past due to pivotal moments. For instance, he raised approximately $28 million following a televised debate loss to Trump on June 27. Additionally, Biden collected $19.2 million in the aftermath of Trump’s felony convictions. Meanwhile, Trump and his affiliates garnered $69 million in the two days surrounding his conviction on May 30, which led to a surge of traffic that temporarily crashed his campaign website.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups accumulated $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.