Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors through its principal fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee and fundraising tool for Democratic organizations, indicated that this amount was collected over two days, according to a live tracker managed by Ryan Murphy of The Marshall Project. While this total is not official and is derived from ActBlue’s comprehensive tracker of donations since 2004, it offers insight into the group’s fundraising performance ahead of any required financial disclosures.
On Sunday, contributions reached $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The previous record for donations was set on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump participated in their first presidential debate, based on Murphy’s data.
Following the surge in donations on Sunday, ActBlue surpassed $14 billion in total funds raised since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the fundraising platform used by Republicans and which began in late 2019, has collected approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue noted in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that many individuals reported making their first-ever donations within the last 24 hours. “It’s so motivating to see new small-dollar donors join the grassroots movement!” they stated.
Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from major donors within 24 hours of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris, as reported by Politico. Additionally, Swing Left, which launched a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, informed Agence France-Presse that it raised over $160,000 in that same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed on Monday that Harris’s campaign will be “very well financed” and pledged his support. Democratic benefactors George and Alex Soros have also declared their backing for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most successful fundraising days occurred right after he was defeated by Trump in a televised debate on June 27, where his campaign raised approximately $28 million from that day through June 28, according to a New York Times analysis.
Biden also garnered $19.2 million in the days following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. During that same period, Trump and his affiliated groups raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, leading to a temporary crash of his campaign website due to the influx of donors. In that month, the super PAC aligned with Trump, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million.
From April to June, pro-Biden organizations raised $332.4 million, while pro-Trump entities collected $431.2 million, as reported by The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.