A day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors through ActBlue, its primary fundraising platform. This fundraising surge was reported by Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project, who maintains a live tracker for donations. While the figure is unofficial and derived from ActBlue’s extensive donation records since 2004, it offers insight into the fundraising performance ahead of formal disclosure timelines.
On the previous Sunday, contributors donated $66.9 million to launch Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising tally for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. This surpasses the previous significant donation day, which occurred on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
As a result of the donations received on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed the milestone of $14 billion raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, its Republican counterpart WinRed, which was founded in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion.
ActBlue reported on X, formerly Twitter, that many contributors made their first-ever donations over the weekend, highlighting a wave of new small-dollar donors joining the movement.
Furthermore, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in commitments from major backers shortly after Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of Harris. Additionally, Swing Left, an organization focused on supporting the Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 within the same 24-hour period.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence that Harris’s campaign will be well-funded, alongside support from notable Democratic donors George and Alex Soros.
Historically, Biden’s fundraising spikes have occurred following critical public events, such as after he was outperformed by Trump during a debate on June 27, leading to approximately $28 million raised in subsequent days. More recently, Biden garnered $19.2 million following Trump’s conviction on multiple felony counts. In contrast, Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million in the days surrounding his conviction, with his campaign website experiencing a brief crash due to the influx of donors.
During the second quarter of the year, pro-Biden organizations raised a total of $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million, with Biden holding $281 million in funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million by the end of June.