Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised an impressive $100 million through its main fundraising platform, ActBlue.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue reported this fundraising achievement over a span of two days. While the total isn’t officially confirmed—being based on ActBlue’s own tracker of donations since 2004—it provides insight into the group’s financial gains ahead of formal disclosure periods.
On Sunday alone, contributions reached $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking one of the largest fundraising days for the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The prior notable day for fundraising was September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
The influx of donations on Sunday also enabled ActBlue to surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception twenty years ago. In contrast, WinRed, a fundraising platform for Republicans that started in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue shared in a statement on X, previously Twitter, on Monday afternoon that many new donors reported making their first-ever contributions in the last 24 hours, highlighting a surge in small-dollar donations 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 initiated a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence in Harris’s financing, stating her campaign will be well-supported. Notable Democratic donors, such as George and Alex Soros, have also lent their backing to Harris.
Historically, Biden’s fundraising efforts peaked after a substantial defeat during a debate with Trump on June 27, gathering around $28 million between June 27 and June 28, according to The New York Times. Additionally, he raised $19.2 million following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, whereas Trump and related groups amassed $69 million within a day of the conviction. Trump’s campaign website briefly crashed due to the influx of donations that followed.
In total, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million from April to June, while pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in funds available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.