A day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, the Democratic Party raised $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee supporting Democratic groups, reported this figure over the past two days, as tracked by Ryan Murphy of The Marshall Project. This tally, although unofficial and based on ActBlue’s internal tracker of donations since 2004, gives insight into the group’s fundraising efforts ahead of official disclosure deadlines.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million for the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, marking the largest single-day fundraising total for the 2024 election cycle on ActBlue. The previous record for donations occurred on September 30, 2020, when Biden and Trump participated in their first presidential debate, according to Murphy’s data.
As a result of this influx of donations, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the fundraising platform for Republicans which started in late 2019, has raised approximately $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue stated on social media that many donors reported making their first-ever contributions in the last 24 hours, highlighting the engagement of new small-dollar donors in 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. Another organization, Swing Left, reported raising over $160,000 in the same time frame.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed confidence in Harris’s campaign being “very well financed” and indicated his support. Prominent Democratic donors, George and Alex Soros, have also endorsed Harris.
Previously, Biden’s fundraising had soared after his defeat by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, where he and his committees raised around $28 million in the following days. Biden raised $19.2 million after Trump faced 34 felony charges, while Trump and his allied groups amassed $69 million from May 30 to May 31, causing a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. An affiliated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups collected $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups raised $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in funds compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.