Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that serves Democratic groups, reported this figure over the past two days, based on a live tracker set up by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this tally is unofficial and drawn from ActBlue’s comprehensive donation history since 2004, it highlights the group’s fundraising success just weeks before official disclosures are due.
On Sunday alone, contributors funneled $66.9 million into Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 election cycle through ActBlue. The previous record for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, as noted by Murphy’s tracker.
The substantial donations on Sunday helped ActBlue surpass $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that was launched in late 2019, has gathered around $4.3 billion to date, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue reported on X, formerly known as Twitter, that numerous individuals claimed to have made their first ever donations in the past 24 hours, describing the influx of new small-dollar donors as motivating for the grassroots movement.
Following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, garnered $150 million in new commitments from major donors within just 24 hours. Additionally, Swing Left, which initiated a fund for the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising 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 confirmed his support for her. Notable Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Historically, Biden experienced significant fundraising spikes following serious setbacks, such as after being decisively defeated by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, when he and his committees raised around $28 million from that date until June 28, according to a New York Times analysis.
Biden also secured $19.2 million shortly after Trump was convicted on multiple felony counts. In contrast, Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million between May 30 and May 31, the day after his conviction, which temporarily caused Trump’s campaign website to crash. The aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that same month.
Between April and 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 available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.