Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not pursue re-election, Democrats raised an impressive $100 million through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic groups, recorded this amount over the course of two days, as noted by a live tracker from Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official, it reflects donations tracked by ActBlue since its inception in 2004 and gives insight into its fundraising efforts ahead of upcoming disclosures.
On Sunday, donors contributed $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, setting a record for the highest single-day fundraising effort in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
This surge of contributions allowed ActBlue to surpass a milestone of $14 billion raised since it was founded two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform established in late 2019, has raised around $4.3 billion to date.
ActBlue remarked on social media that they had seen many new small-dollar donors contributing for the first time in the last 24 hours, highlighting the enthusiasm for grassroots support.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from significant donors within a day of his announcement and endorsement of Harris, according to Politico. Swing Left, a fund established to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed,” indicating strong backing from prominent Democratic donors such as George and Alex Soros.
Historically, Biden’s strongest fundraising moments have followed significant events, including after a televised debate with Trump in late June when Biden and his committees raised approximately $28 million. Following Trump’s conviction on multiple felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliated groups garnered $69 million during the same period, briefly overwhelming Trump’s campaign website. In that month, the super PAC aligned with Trump raised $70 million.
Between April and June, pro-Biden groups collected $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.