Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he will not run for re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through ActBlue, the primary fundraising platform for Democratic groups. According to a live tracker created by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project, this sum was recorded over the previous two days. While the figures are not official and are based on ActBlue’s historical data, they offer insights into the fundraising activities ahead of upcoming disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed an impressive $66.9 million to kick off Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest one-day fundraising total in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The second-highest total occurred on September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Thanks to the influx of donations, ActBlue has now raised $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform launched in late 2019, has gathered approximately $4.3 billion as per OpenSecrets data.
In a statement on X (formerly known as Twitter), ActBlue noted, “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!”
Additionally, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, secured $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left indicated that it raised over $160,000 in the same time frame to support the eventual Democratic nominee.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed his support for Harris’s campaign on Monday, stating it would be “very well financed.” Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown their backing for Harris.
Historically, Biden’s best fundraising days followed his defeat during a televised debate against Trump on June 27, when he raised around $28 million between that day and June 28, as reported by a New York Times analysis. After Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the subsequent days, while Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, even causing a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. Trump’s aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million within that month.
Between April and June, groups supporting Biden raised $332.4 million, whereas pro-Trump groups garnered $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the close of June, Biden had $281 million in funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.