Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, reported this impressive figure over the past two days, as noted by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While the total is not an official figure—it is based on ActBlue’s own mega-tracker of donations since 2004—it gives insight into the group’s fundraising success in the weeks leading up to required financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributions amounted to $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day of the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record for donations in recent times occurred on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump faced off in their first presidential debate, according to Murphy’s tracker.
As a result of the donation surge on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, its Republican counterpart launched in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion so far, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement on Monday, 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!”
In addition to grassroots efforts, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Swing Left, which initiated a fund supporting the eventual Democratic nominee, claimed to have raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, indicated on Monday that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his support. Democratic mega-donors George and Alex Soros have also thrown their backing behind Harris.
Historically, Biden’s most successful fundraising days came immediately after a significant debate loss against Trump on June 27. Following that event, Biden and his affiliated committees collected about $28 million between June 27 and June 28, as analyzed by The New York Times.
In the aftermath of Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in subsequent days, while Trump and his allied groups amassed $69 million from May 30 to May 31, which briefly crashed his campaign website. Additionally, the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million that same month.
Between April and June, pro-Biden organizations gathered $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.