Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats generated $100 million in donations through ActBlue, their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee for Democratic organizations, saw this impressive total accumulate over two days, as reported by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official and is derived from ActBlue’s extensive tracking of donations since 2004, it does provide insight into the fundraising trends ahead of mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the most significant fundraising day for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate, holds the record for the second-highest donations in recent times, according to Murphy’s tracker.
As a result of the donation surge, ActBlue has now raised $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, its Republican counterpart WinRed, which was launched in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, as reported by OpenSecrets.
“We’ve seen a wave of first-time donors in the past 24 hours!” ActBlue stated on platform X, previously known as Twitter. “It’s incredibly inspiring to see new small-dollar contributors joining the grassroots movement!”
Following Biden’s announcement and the endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours, according to Politico. Additionally, Swing Left, an initiative supporting the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
On Monday, Evercore founder Roger Altman expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign finances, stating it would be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Prominent Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also thrown their support behind Harris.
Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising success immediately following a televised debate loss to Trump on June 27, raising around $28 million between that day and June 28, as analyzed by the New York Times.
Biden also raised $19.2 million in the aftermath of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. During the same period, Trump and affiliated groups raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, prompting a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. An associated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups garnered $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.