Just one day after President Joe Biden announced he would not run for re-election, Democratic fundraising efforts surged, with $100 million raised through ActBlue, the primary fundraising platform for the party.
A recent Coinbase poll indicates that Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are in a close race for the support of crypto voters. ActBlue’s impressive fundraising tally was noted by Ryan Murphy, a developer with The Marshall Project, although it is based on their own tracking and not officially confirmed. The numbers provide an early glimpse into the group’s fundraising success ahead of mandated financial disclosures.
On Sunday alone, the donors contributed $66.9 million to kick off Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, making it the most successful fundraising day of the 2024 cycle for ActBlue. This surpassed another high point on September 30, 2020, during the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump, according to Murphy’s records.
The spike in donations allowed ActBlue to surpass a significant milestone, raising $14 billion since its establishment two decades ago. In contrast, WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform that started in late 2019, has gathered approximately $4.3 billion, as reported by OpenSecrets.
ActBlue expressed excitement over the influx of new small-dollar donors on social media, highlighting the grassroots support emerging from this recent surge. Simultaneously, Future Forward, a super PAC aligned with Biden, reportedly secured $150 million in commitments from major donors within a day of Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris. Swing Left also shared that it raised over $160,000 in 24 hours to support the eventual Democratic nominee.
Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, stated that Harris’s campaign would be “very well financed” and offered his support, along with backing from notable Democratic donors like George and Alex Soros.
In previous fundraising efforts, Biden experienced a spike after facing Trump during a televised debate on June 27, generating around $28 million shortly after. He also raised $19.2 million following Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. That same period saw Trump and his supporters collect $69 million from May 30 to May 31, which caused a temporary crash of his campaign website. The affiliated super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., raised $70 million that month.
From April to June, pro-Biden groups accumulated $332.4 million, while pro-Trump organizations raised $431.2 million, according to The Financial Times. By the end of June, Biden had $281 million in his war chest compared to Trump’s $336.2 million.