Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democrats managed to raise $100 million from donors through their primary fundraising platform.
ActBlue, a political action committee that supports Democratic groups, reported this fundraising success over the last two days via a live tracker created by Ryan Murphy from The Marshall Project. While these figures are not official, they offer a glimpse into the fundraising activities prior to the mandatory disclosure filings.
On Sunday alone, contributors donated an impressive $66.9 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the most significant day for fundraising in the 2024 election cycle for ActBlue. The previous record was set on September 30, 2020, the day of the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump.
Thanks to the surge in donations over the weekend, ActBlue reached a milestone of $14 billion in funds raised since its establishment two decades ago. In comparison, WinRed, the GOP’s counterpart created in late 2019, has accumulated around $4.3 billion in donations since its inception.
ActBlue expressed enthusiasm about the influx of new donors, stating on X (formerly known as Twitter), “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 supporting Biden, garnered $150 million in new pledges from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and Harris’s endorsement. Swing Left, which has initiated a fund to support the eventual Democratic nominee, announced it raised over $160,000 in just 24 hours.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, commented that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and expressed his commitment to her candidacy. Prominent Democratic donors George and Alex Soros have also shown support for Harris.
Previously, Biden’s most successful fundraising periods occurred after his defeat by Trump in a televised debate on June 27, when he and his committees raised around $28 million within a day. Following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden raised $19.2 million in the subsequent days, while Trump and his supportive organizations raised $69 million from May 30 to May 31, causing a brief crash of Trump’s campaign website. In that same month, Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC aligned with Trump, raised $70 million.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups raised a total of $332.4 million, while pro-Trump groups collected $431.2 million. By the end of June, Biden reported having $281 million on hand, compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.