Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee supporting Democratic organizations, recorded this amount over the last two days, according to a real-time tracker created by developer Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official, as it originates from ActBlue’s own donation tracker since 2004, it offers insight into the fundraising efforts ahead of formal disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest fundraising day in the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The previous highest day for donations was September 30, 2020, during the first Biden-Trump debate.
Following the surge in donations, ActBlue reached a total of $14 billion raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, its Republican counterpart, WinRed, which began operating in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue announced on X, formerly Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first-ever donations in the past 24 hours, highlighting the excitement of 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 within 24 hours following Biden’s endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which launched a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, remarked that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support. Prominent Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Biden’s past notable fundraising success occurred following his considerable defeat by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, when he and his committees raised about $28 million in just over a day. Subsequent events, including Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, also yielded significant fundraising for both candidates, with March reports revealing pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, leaving both candidates with competitive funding post-June.