Democrats raised $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform, ActBlue, just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election. According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project, this amount was collected over the past two days, although it’s based on ActBlue’s unofficial donation tally since its inception in 2004.
On the previous Sunday alone, contributions totaled $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the highest single-day fundraising effort for the 2024 election cycle. This surpassed the previous second-best fundraising day on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
With this recent influx of donations, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its founding two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion, as reported by OpenSecrets.
ActBlue noted an exciting trend with many donors making their first contributions in the last 24 hours, reflecting a surge of new small-dollar supporters joining the grassroots movement.
Additionally, Future Forward, a pro-Biden super PAC, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Another organization, Swing Left, reported raising over $160,000 within 24 hours for the eventual Democratic nominee.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence in Harris’s financing abilities and affirmed his support. Key Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also endorsed her campaign.
Historically, Biden’s fundraising peaked immediately following his defeat against Trump in a televised debate on June 27, when he and his committees garnered around $28 million in the ensuing days. After Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his supporters saw a significant boost, raising $69 million within two days following his conviction, which caused a temporary crash of his campaign website. During that same month, the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups collected a total of $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups received $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden held $281 million in funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.