Just a day after President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and vital fundraising platform for Democratic organizations, noted this significant fundraising achievement over the past two days according to a live tracker from Ryan Murphy, a developer at The Marshall Project. Although this tally is not official, as it is based on ActBlue’s own records since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising efforts ahead of the required disclosures.
On Sunday, alone, donors contributed $66.9 million following the unveiling of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. This marked the largest single-day fundraising effort in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous top fundraising day was September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump clashed in their first presidential debate.
With the surge in donations on Sunday, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, a Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has collected about $4.3 billion so far.
ActBlue expressed excitement about the influx of new donors, stating on X, formerly Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first-ever contributions in the last 24 hours, highlighting the motivation behind the grassroots movement.
In addition to ActBlue’s success, Future Forward, an aligned super PAC with Biden, secured $150 million in commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which has initiated a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, disclosed that it raised over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Evercore founder Roger Altman emphasized on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and expressed his support. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also pledged their backing to Harris.
Biden’s most profitable fundraising moments in the past occurred after he faced off against Donald Trump in a televised debate on June 27, where he and his committees raised about $28 million in the immediate aftermath. Additionally, after Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his associated groups gathered $69 million from May 30 to May 31, which even caused a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. The super PAC associated with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., contributed to this by raising $70 million that month.
Between April and June, groups supporting Biden raised $332.4 million, while those backing Trump brought in $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden’s campaign reported having $281 million on hand, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.