Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million via their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, the political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, noted this substantial amount had been collected over the past two days, according to a tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While the figure is unofficial and relies on ActBlue’s tracking of total contributions since 2004, it gives insight into recent fundraising activity ahead of formal disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest single day of fundraising for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. For context, the previous best day for donations was recorded on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
With the donations from Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the fundraising platform for Republican candidates established in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue announced on X, previously known as Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first donation in the last 24 hours, demonstrating enthusiasm among new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots effort.
In response to Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, the Future Forward super PAC associated with Biden secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day, as reported by Politico. Additionally, Swing Left, which has initiated a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, claimed to have raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and confirmed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, are also backing Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most successful fundraising days came following his defeat by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where his team raised approximately $28 million in a two-day span. Biden raised $19.2 million in the wake of Trump being convicted on 34 felony counts, while Trump and his associated groups garnered $69 million from his conviction date, which briefly caused his campaign website to crash. An allied super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month alone.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups accumulated $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.