Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported this fundraising amount over the past two days via a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project. Although the figure is not official, as it is derived from ActBlue’s comprehensive donation tracker established since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 election cycle via ActBlue. The second-highest day for donations recently occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
The substantial donations on Sunday also enabled ActBlue to reach a milestone of $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago, while WinRed, the Republican equivalent that started in late 2019, has raised around $4.3 billion since its launch.
In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, ActBlue noted, “We’ve seen so many folks saying they made their first ever donation in the last 24 hours! It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!”
Future Forward, a super PAC allied with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Additionally, Swing Left, which initiated a fund supporting the future Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Evercore founder Roger Altman expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign being “very well financed” and confirmed his support. Prominent Democratic benefactors George and Alex Soros have also endorsed Harris.
Previously, Biden’s highest fundraising days occurred following his debate loss to Donald Trump on June 27, when he and his committees garnered approximately $28 million by June 28, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
Biden also raised $19.2 million in the days following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. In the same period, Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million from May 30 to May 31, leading to a brief crash of Trump’s campaign website due to the influx of donations. The super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million on hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.