Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform, ActBlue.
ActBlue, a political action committee dedicated to fundraising for Democratic organizations, reported this significant sum raised over the past two days, according to a tracker created by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this figure is not officially confirmed and is based on ActBlue’s own historical data since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance just weeks ahead of mandatory financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributors raised $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the largest single-day fundraising total in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record for donations on a single day was set on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Following this boost in donations, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform established in late 2019, has collected around $4.3 billion to date, according to OpenSecrets.
In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, ActBlue noted a surge in first-time donors. “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!”
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reported receiving $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of the announcement of Biden’s decision and his endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which created a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, raised more than $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed strong support for Harris’s campaign, stating it would be “very well financed.” Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their support for Harris.
Previously, Biden experienced significant fundraising on days following notable political events, including after his televised debate with Trump, which resulted in approximately $28 million raised between June 27 and June 28, according to The New York Times. Biden also secured $19.2 million in the days after Trump faced felony charges, while Trump and his affiliated organizations raised $69 million in the immediate aftermath of his conviction.
Reports indicate that from April to June, pro-Biden groups gathered $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.