Democrats Surge: $100 Million in Donations Following Biden’s Surprise Announcement

Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats secured $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.

ActBlue, the political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, recorded this amount over the previous two days, as noted by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, who maintains a live tracker of contributions. While this total has not been officially validated and is based on ActBlue’s internal mega-tracker dating back to 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance prior to official disclosures.

On Sunday, contributions reached $66.9 million to support the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising effort in the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The second highest day for donations was recorded on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.

Following the spike in donations on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in cash raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican equivalent established in late 2019, has amassed about $4.3 billion in contributions, according to OpenSecrets.

ActBlue expressed excitement over the influx of new donors, stating, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours! It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”

Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, garnered $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and Harris’s endorsement, as reported by Politico. Swing Left, which initiated a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, indicated it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.

Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, remarked that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also shown their backing for Harris.

Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising success shortly after his defeat by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, raising approximately $28 million from that day into the next. In the aftermath of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his associated groups amassed $69 million from May 30 to May 31, briefly causing a crash of Trump’s campaign website. In that month, the super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., also raised $70 million.

From April to June, pro-Biden efforts totaled $332.4 million, while pro-Trump initiatives collected $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.

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