Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats raised an impressive $100 million via their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee designed to support Democratic organizations, reported this amount collected over just two days, as indicated by a real-time donation tracker managed by Ryan Murphy at The Marshall Project. Although this figure has not been officially verified and is based on ActBlue’s internal tracking of donations since its inception in 2004, it gives a glimpse into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of the upcoming disclosure deadlines.
On Sunday alone, contributions reached $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the largest fundraising day of the current 2024 cycle for ActBlue. This surpassed the previous high recorded on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Thanks to this spike in donations, ActBlue achieved an impressive milestone of $14 billion raised since its establishment two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform that began operations in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion to date.
In a statement on X, formerly Twitter, ActBlue expressed excitement over the surge, highlighting many first-time donors getting involved in the grassroots initiative.
Within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with the Biden campaign, secured $150 million in fresh commitments from major donors. Additionally, Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, remarked on Monday that Harris’s campaign is set to be “very well financed” and expressed his support. Notable Democratic donors, including George and Alex Soros, are also backing Harris.
Previously, Biden’s significant fundraising moments occurred after he faced a loss against Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where he and his affiliates garnered around $28 million within a day. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the days thereafter, while Trump and his associated groups amassed $69 million between May 30 and May 31, causing a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. An aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised an additional $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, compared to $431.2 million for pro-Trump groups, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden’s campaign had $281 million on hand, while Trump held $336.2 million.