Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised an impressive $100 million from donors through its primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, recorded this amount over the past two days. While this figure is not officially verified — based on ActBlue’s own comprehensive tracker of donations since 2004 — it offers insight into the group’s fundraising achievements ahead of any mandated disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest fundraising day in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The second highest day for recent donations was recorded on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s tracker.
The surge of donations on Sunday also propelled ActBlue past $14 billion in total contributions accumulated since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican counterpart that started in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion to date, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue reported on X, previously known as Twitter, that many first-time donors stepped forward in the last 24 hours, citing it as an inspiring moment for the grassroots movement.
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Additionally, Swing Left, which established a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, claimed to have raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her candidacy. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most successful fundraising moments occurred following a debate defeat against former President Donald Trump on June 27, when Biden and his committees amassed about $28 million in just a day. Biden raised an additional $19.2 million in the days after Trump was charged with 34 felony counts, while Trump and his affiliated organizations collected $69 million from his conviction on May 30 to May 31. In fact, the surge of donations temporarily crashed Trump’s campaign website. An associated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups garnered $332.4 million, while pro-Trump organizations took in $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.