Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats generated $100 million in contributions via their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic organizations, reported this amount over two days, according to Ryan Murphy, a developer with The Marshall Project, who maintains a live donation tracker. Although these numbers are not officially confirmed and are based on ActBlue’s cumulative donation records since 2004, they indicate a strong fundraising effort ahead of required financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donations totaled $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The second-highest single day for donations was recorded on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Thanks to the impressive fundraising on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion raised since its inception two decades ago. Meanwhile, WinRed, the Republican equivalent that was launched in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue noted in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first donations within the last 24 hours. They expressed excitement seeing new small-dollar contributors joining the grassroots movement.
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reported securing $150 million from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and Harris’s endorsement, according to Politico. Additionally, Swing Left, which established a fund for the eventual Democratic nominee, stated it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, commented that Harris’s campaign is expected to be “very well financed” and affirmed his support for her candidacy. Democratic mega-donors George and Alex Soros have also shown support for Harris.
Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising shortly after being thoroughly challenged by former President Donald Trump during a debate on June 27. Biden’s campaign and affiliated committees raised approximately $28 million within a day following that debate. Furthermore, Biden amassed $19.2 million in the days after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, while Trump and his associated groups raised $69 million in the immediate aftermath of his conviction on May 30. This surge in donations even led to temporary outages on Trump’s campaign website. In May alone, the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump entities raised $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the close of June, Biden had $281 million in available funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.