ActBlue rakes in nearly $50 million in 7 hours after Harris campaign launch
Correction: A total of $47 million was donated via ActBlue to all races in the seven hours after Harris launched her campaign Sunday. A previous version of this article contained incorrect information.
Small dollar-donors gave nearly $47 million on ActBlue in the seven hours after Vice President Harris's campaign for president launched Sunday afternoon, the Democratic fundraising platform announced Sunday.
“As of 9pm ET, grassroots supporters have raised $46.7 million through ActBlue following Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign launch. This has been the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle. Small-dollar donors are fired up and ready to take on this election,” ActBlue wrote in an update posted to social media platform X.
The figure is the total amount raised on the platform, not only donations to the Harris campaign.
President Biden announced just before 2 p.m. Sunday that he would be stepping aside in the presidential race and quickly offered his “full support and endorsement” of Harris.
ActBlue previously said that in the first five hours of Harris’s campaign, the platform raised more than $27.5 million through small donor donation.
The New York Times reported that Sunday marked the single biggest day for online Democratic donations since the 2020 election. The Times said the previous record was set the day after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, when ActBlue raised about $73.5 million.
Key Democratic donors are also throwing their support behind Harris in the wake of Biden’s decision.
Trump had eaten away at Biden's fundraising lead in recent weeks, and big-dollar donors reportedly froze some $90 million from the president's re-election campaign amid calls for him to exit the race.
Biden's move to not seek reelection comes after weeks of Democrats urging the president to withdraw from the race following a disastrous debate performance with former President Trump. Biden and his campaign repeatedly dismissed the calls to step up until this weekend, despite a growing number of Democrats calling on him to withdraw.
In the hours since Biden’s announcement, Democrats have rallied behind Harris as their likely nominee for November’s election. Harris said later on Sunday that she intends to “earn and win” the Democratic presidential nomination.