Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic initiatives, recorded this amount over the past two days, as shown by a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official—being based on ActBlue’s own comprehensive tracker of donations since 2004—it offers insight into the fundraising capabilities of the organization prior to any mandatory disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions reached $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the largest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The previous record was set on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s data.
As a result of the donation surge on Sunday, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that began operating in late 2019, has amassed approximately $4.3 billion in donations.
ActBlue commented on the influx of new contributors, stating, “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!”
Following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reportedly secured $150 million in new commitments from significant donors within 24 hours. Additionally, Swing Left, which has created a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, raised over $160,000 in that same period.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, emphasized on Monday that Harris’s campaign is expected to be “very well financed” and assured his support for her. Prominent Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also backed Harris.
Biden’s previous highest fundraising days occurred shortly after his defeat by Donald Trump during a debate on June 27, when he and his committees raised around $28 million in a span of just over a day. After Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million within a few days, while Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million following his conviction, leading to a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. An associated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, groups supporting Biden raised a total of $332.4 million, whereas those backing Trump brought in $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, in comparison to Trump’s $336.2 million.