Just a day after President Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, Democrats raised $100 million through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic groups, reported this significant fundraising total over the last two days, based on a live tracker by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While this figure is not official, as it comes from ActBlue’s internal tracker of donations dating back to 2004, it offers insights into the organization’s financial performance ahead of the upcoming required disclosures.
On Sunday alone, donors contributed $66.9 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launch, marking the highest single-day fundraising total for ActBlue in the 2024 election cycle. The second highest day for donations in recent memory was September 30, 2020, coinciding with the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
With the surge in donations, ActBlue surpassed a notable milestone, raising a total of $14 billion since its inception two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform launched in late 2019, has raised around $4.3 billion, according to OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement over the influx of new donors saying, “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 following Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Another Democratic group, Swing Left, reported raising over $160,000 within the same timeframe.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated that Kamala Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” with his support, and Democratic mega-donors George and Alex Soros have also pledged their backing to her.
Biden previously experienced significant fundraising success after being challenged by Trump during a televised debate on June 27, raising about $28 million between June 27 and June 28, according to a New York Times analysis. He also raised $19.2 million following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. Trump’s campaign and related groups garnered $69 million in the days from May 30 to May 31, leading to a temporary crash of Trump’s campaign website. During the same month, an aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million.
Between April and June, groups supporting Biden raised $332.4 million, while those supporting Trump collected $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million available, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.