Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million from donors using their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported reaching this significant sum over a span of two days, according to a tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy of The Marshall Project. Although this figure is not officially confirmed, as it relies on ActBlue’s own data going back to 2004, it sheds light on the group’s fundraising capabilities ahead of any mandatory financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest fundraising day for the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record was set on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy.
As a result of the donation surge on Sunday, ActBlue reached a milestone of $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception 20 years ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform established in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion in donations, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue highlighted the engagement from first-time donors on social media, stating, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours! It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, garnered $150 million in new pledges from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Another group, Swing Left, which has launched a fund to support the ultimate Democratic nominee, reported raising more than $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, remarked that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her candidacy. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also committed their backing to Harris.
In the past, Biden’s most successful fundraising efforts followed his considerable defeat to Trump during a debate on June 27, during which Biden and his committees raised around $28 million over the following day. Biden also raised $19.2 million after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, while Trump’s affiliated groups raised $69 million between May 30 and May 31, causing a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. The super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that same month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while their pro-Trump counterparts 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.