Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats successfully raised $100 million from donors through ActBlue, their primary fundraising platform.
According to a live tracker maintained by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, ActBlue recorded this total within a span of two days. While the amount is not officially confirmed and based on self-reported figures since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of upcoming disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donations reached $66.9 million in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the largest fundraising day for the 2024 cycle via ActBlue. The previous peak for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
The recent increase in donations allowed ActBlue to surpass a significant milestone, raising a total of $14 billion since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has accumulated around $4.3 billion, as reported by OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement over the surge in new donors, stating on X (formerly 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 supportive of Biden, has attracted $150 million in new commitments from major donors just within 24 hours following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Additionally, Swing Left reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Evercore founder Roger Altman commented that Harris’s campaign is positioned to be “very well financed,” and noted his support for her. Democratic mega-donors George and Alex Soros have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Previously, Biden witnessed his most successful fundraising periods immediately after a significant debate loss to Trump on June 27, which resulted in approximately $28 million raised in the subsequent day. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million in a single day following his conviction on May 30. The influx of contributions caused a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website, and the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. raised $70 million during that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups amassed $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups took in $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.