Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, the Democratic Party secured $100 million from donors via its primary fundraising platform, ActBlue. This total was recorded over two days, according to a real-time tracker managed by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official and is based on data from ActBlue’s comprehensive donation tracker established in 2004, it offers insights into the group’s fundraising efforts just weeks before mandatory reports are due.
On Sunday alone, contributions amounted to $66.9 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, setting a record for the largest fundraising day in the 2024 election cycle on ActBlue. This surpassed the previous high, achieved during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump on September 30, 2020.
As a result of this influx of donations, ActBlue has now raised a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the fundraising platform for Republicans that started in late 2019, has accumulated around $4.3 billion.
ActBlue noted the excitement surrounding new donations on X, previously known as Twitter, stating, “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!”
In addition, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, received $150 million in new commitments from prominent donors within a day following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left, which supports the eventual Democratic nominee, reported raising over $160,000 in the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, expressed support for Harris’s campaign, predicting it would be “very well financed.” Prominent Democratic donors such as George and Alex Soros also showed their backing for Harris.
In past fundraising efforts, Biden experienced significant boosts following his televised debate responses against Trump. After a particularly tough debate on June 27, he and his committees raised around $28 million in the subsequent days. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million, while Trump and his supporting groups amassed $69 million in the immediate aftermath of his conviction. Trump’s campaign website even experienced a brief crash due to the surge in donations. An associated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden entities raised $332.4 million, contrasting with pro-Trump groups which brought in $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in hand compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.