Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors using their main fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, recorded this impressive amount over the past two days, as noted by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. Although this figure is not official, it offers insight into ActBlue’s fundraising performance just weeks before any mandatory disclosures are due.
On Sunday alone, donations totaled $66.9 million for the kickoff of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the highest single-day fundraising event for the 2024 election cycle through ActBlue. This surpassed the previous record set on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump participated in their first presidential debate.
The significant influx of donations on Sunday helped ActBlue surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. Conversely, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has accumulated approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue noted in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, that many donors reported making their first-ever contributions in the past 24 hours, highlighting the motivation brought by new small-dollar supporters joining the grassroots movement.
Future Forward, a super PAC affiliated with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris, according to Politico. Swing Left, which aims to support the eventual Democratic nominee, stated it raised over $160,000 within the same time frame.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and confirmed his support for her. Major Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, have also pledged their backing.
Previously, Biden experienced a notable fundraising surge following his defeat by Trump during a televised debate on June 27. Between that day and June 28, Biden and his committees raised about $28 million, as reported by a New York Times analysis.
Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million from May 30 to May 31. This spike in donations temporarily crashed Trump’s campaign website, and his supporting super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised an additional $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups accumulated $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups received $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in his campaign war chest compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.