Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats gathered $100 million from their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a key political action committee that facilitates fundraising for Democratic initiatives, recorded this impressive amount over just two days, according to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While these figures are not official and come from ActBlue’s extensive tracking system, they offer insight into the group’s fundraising efforts ahead of required financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single fundraising day so far for the 2024 cycle on ActBlue. The next highest daily total occurred on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
As a result of the donations over the weekend, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in funds raised since its establishment two decades ago. Its Republican counterpart, WinRed, which began operating in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue reported significant engagement from new donors, stating, “We’ve seen many individuals making their first-ever donations in the last 24 hours! It’s inspiring to see new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots movement!”
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors shortly after his announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Swing Left, which initiated a fund for the Democratic nominee, claimed to have raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, indicated on Monday that Harris’s campaign is poised to be “very well financed” with his support. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also expressed their backing for Harris.
Previously, some of Biden’s most successful fundraising days occurred right after he faced off against Trump during a debate on June 27, when Biden and his campaign raised around $28 million in the following hours. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in just a few days. Meanwhile, Trump and his affiliates raised $69 million in the immediate aftermath of his conviction on May 30, demonstrating a surge in donor engagement that even briefly caused a crash on Trump’s campaign website. An associated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., garnered $70 million in that month.
From April to June, Biden-aligned groups raised a total of $332.4 million, while pro-Trump factions collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in his war chest compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.