Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors via ActBlue, the primary fundraising platform for Democratic organizations.
According to a live tracker by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project, this significant amount was collected over the past two days. While the figures are unofficial and based on ActBlue’s own donation totals since 2004, they provide insight into the group’s fundraising effectiveness just weeks before mandatory financial disclosures are due.
On Sunday alone, donations reached $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 cycle on ActBlue. This surpassed previous substantial fundraising days, including during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump on September 30, 2020.
As a result of the surge in contributions, ActBlue announced it has raised $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, its Republican counterpart founded in late 2019, has gathered about $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets data.
“We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours!” ActBlue expressed in a statement on social media. “It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in fresh commitments from major donors within just 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Meanwhile, Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe to support the future Democratic nominee.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, commented on Monday that Harris’s campaign is expected to be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Notable Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also shown their backing for Harris.
Previously, significant fundraising days for Biden included the period following a televised debate where he faced off against Trump on June 27, resulting in about $28 million raised. After Trump’s recent felony conviction, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and affiliated groups garnered $69 million in the same timeframe, briefly crashing his campaign website due to the influx of donations and raising an additional $70 million through the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump groups. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million on hand, while Trump had $336.2 million.