Just one 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 that supports Democratic initiatives, recorded this amount over two days, as detailed by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. While this figure is unofficial and derived from ActBlue’s own tracker of donations since 2004, it gives an early glimpse into fundraising efforts ahead of upcoming disclosures.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest fundraising day for the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. The previous record for daily donations occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
With the influx of donations on Sunday, ActBlue reached $14 billion raised since its establishment two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform launched in late 2019, has accumulated approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first-ever donations in the last 24 hours, expressing enthusiasm over the growth of new small-dollar donors joining the grassroots effort.
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, garnered $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. The group Swing Left, which supports the future Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed,” and emphasized his support for her. Notable Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also shown their backing for Harris.
Historically, Biden’s most successful fundraising days followed his significant loss to Trump in a debate on June 27, which brought in around $28 million in a two-day period, as reported by a New York Times analysis.
Biden raised $19.2 million shortly after Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts. In contrast, Trump and his affiliated groups collected $69 million from May 30 to May 31, causing 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 organizations accumulated $332.4 million, while pro-Trump entities raised $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden’s campaign had $281 million on hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.