Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million from donors via their main fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee supporting Democratic initiatives, recorded this amount over the past two days, according to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While the total is not official and relies on ActBlue’s mega-tracker of donations since 2004, it gives insight into the organization’s fundraising success ahead of any required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The previous record occurred on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first debate.
As a result of this surge in donations, ActBlue reached $14 billion in total cash raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that began in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion since its launch.
ActBlue stated on X, previously known as Twitter, “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 aligned with Biden, garnered $150 million in new commitments from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Swing Left, which initiated a fund in support of the future Democratic nominee, indicated it raised over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and pledged his support for her candidacy. Significant Democratic donors such as George and Alex Soros have also voiced their backing for Harris.
Biden’s most successful fundraising days prior to this came shortly after a strong debate performance against Trump on June 27, when Biden and his committees raised around $28 million in just one day. In the wake of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and associated groups collected $69 million during the following 24 hours, which caused a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. An aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised $332.4 million, compared to pro-Trump groups’ intake of $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden held $281 million in funds, while Trump had $336.2 million.