Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported this amount over two days via a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this figure is not officially verified and is based on ActBlue’s own records since 2004, it gives insight into the group’s fundraising efforts ahead of official disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donations reached $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. This surpassed a previous high reached on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump participated in their first debate, according to Murphy’s tracker.
The significant activity on Sunday helped ActBlue exceed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, its Republican counterpart established in late 2019, has garnered about $4.3 billion in total donations.
ActBlue released a statement on social media, highlighting the influx of new small-dollar donors since the announcement. The organization noted many individuals mentioned making their inaugural donations in the last 24 hours.
Following Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a Biden-affiliated super PAC, secured $150 million in new commitments from major contributors within 24 hours. Additionally, the grassroots organization Swing Left informed Agence France-Presse that it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and confirmed his support. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also endorsed Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most successful fundraising moments occurred after a notable debate defeat to Trump on June 27, when his team raised about $28 million from that day to June 28, as reported by a New York Times analysis.
Biden also collected $19.2 million after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts. In contrast, Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, which led to a temporary crash of his campaign website due to the surge in donations. Additionally, the pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million in the same month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while those supporting Trump brought in $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in available funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.