Just a 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 that facilitates fundraising for Democratic organizations, reported this amount over two days, according to a live tracker from Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. Although this figure is not official and is derived from ActBlue’s own tracking system since its inception in 2004, it provides insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of upcoming disclosure deadlines.
On Sunday alone, donations reached $66.9 million in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking it as the highest fundraising day for the ActBlue platform in the 2024 election cycle. The previous record was set on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, based on Murphy’s tracker.
The significant donations on Sunday helped ActBlue surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its launch two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, that they had seen numerous first-time donors step forward in the past 24 hours, emphasizing the excitement of welcoming new grassroots supporters.
Moreover, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 within the same time frame in support of the eventual Democratic nominee.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed his confidence in Harris’s campaign being “very well financed” and confirmed his support. Prominent Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also shown backing for Harris.
Biden’s previous notable fundraising days include the time directly after he faced off against Donald Trump during a televised debate in late June, during which he and his committees raised around $28 million. He also raised $19.2 million following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. Trump, in turn, raised $69 million within a day of his conviction in late May, causing brief outages on his campaign website. An affiliated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., collected $70 million that same month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump organizations secured $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in cash reserves compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.