Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through their main fundraising platform, ActBlue. This significant fundraising achievement was reported by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, who maintains a live tracker of donations. While the total is unofficial, it provides insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of the upcoming disclosure deadlines.
On Sunday alone, contributions totaled $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the largest single-day fundraising effort in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. For context, the previous record for daily donations was set during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump on September 30, 2020.
With this influx of donations, ActBlue has now raised $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, a similar platform for Republican fundraising established in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion to date.
ActBlue noted an enthusiastic response from new donors, stating that many had made their first donations in the last 24 hours, expressing excitement about the grassroots support for the campaign.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in commitments from major donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, an initiative supporting the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising more than $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and confirmed his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also expressed backing for Harris.
Earlier in his campaign, Biden experienced major fundraising boosts following key events, including a significant increase after his debate loss to Trump on June 27, which resulted in approximately $28 million raised in the following days. After Trump faced felony charges, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million within a day after the conviction, which briefly caused his campaign website to crash. During the second quarter of the year, pro-Biden efforts raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups gathered $431.2 million, leading to Biden having $281 million on hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million by the end of June.