Just one day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic causes, saw this amount collected over the past two days. While this figure is not officially certified — it is derived from ActBlue’s own comprehensive donation tracker — it offers insights into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of required disclosures.
On Sunday, donors contributed $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single fundraising day in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. This surpassed the previous high, which occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
As a result of the donations on Sunday, ActBlue reached $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, its Republican counterpart, WinRed, founded in late 2019, has garnered approximately $4.3 billion in donations.
ActBlue noted on social media that many individuals reported making their first-ever donations in the last 24 hours, expressing enthusiasm about the influx of new small-dollar donors to the grassroots movement.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which has launched a fund in support of the eventual Democratic nominee, stated that it raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that he believes Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and offered his support. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also endorsed Harris.
Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising successes immediately following his loss to Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where he and his committees raised about $28 million in the following days. He also raised $19.2 million after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts. In the immediate aftermath of that conviction, Trump and his associated groups raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, which even caused a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. His aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations collected $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.