Democrats greeted President Joe Biden’s departure from the presidential race with an avalanche of cash, donating more than $50 million online on Sunday and making it the single biggest day for online Democratic contributions since the 2020 election — with hours to go.
The massive amount is based on a New York Times analysis of the online ticker of contributions maintained by ActBlue, the leading site processing Democratic donations.
With Biden gone and Vice President Kamala Harris building momentum to claim the nomination, Democrats went online to contribute at a startling pace. Donations spiked from an average of less than $200,000 per hour in the hours before Biden quit to nearly $11.5 million in a single hour later Sunday, the analysis shows.
As of 10 p.m., Sunday was ActBlue’s third biggest day for online donations in its history.
The ActBlue ticker accounts for all donations made on the platform, not just those made to Biden or Harris. It includes contributions made to nearly every Democratic House and Senate candidate and to an array of politically minded nonprofits.
“This might be the greatest fundraising moment in Democratic Party history,” wrote Kenneth Pennington, a Democratic digital strategist, on the social platform X.
The previous single biggest day for donations on ActBlue came the day after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away in September 2020. ActBlue processed roughly $73.5 million that day. It is one of only two days the platform ever surpassed $50 million in donations before Sunday
The latest deluge is significant as the party seeks to recover from a month of political infighting and stalled momentum in the race against former President Donald Trump. Party fundraising had slowed considerably among major Democratic donors in the weeks after Biden’s poor debate performance.
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