Harris raised $81 million in first 24 hours as candidate

Vice President Kamala Harris raised $81 million in the first 24 hours since announcing her bid for president, her campaign said, a record-breaking showing as Democrats welcomed her candidacy with one of the greatest gushers of cash of all time.

Her campaign said that 888,000 donors had contributed in her first day, 60% of whom were making their first contribution of the 2024 contest. The campaign signed up 43,000 of those donors to make recurring donations, it said.

The Harris campaign did not break down what share of the $81 million was raised online by small-dollar donations versus from major donors.

But ActBlue, the digital donation portal for Democrats up and down the ballot, had processed more than $90 million in the same 24-hour period, according to a New York Times analysis of the platform’s online ticker of contributions.

The surge of online donations peaked at $11.5 million in a single hour Sunday evening.

The party is quickly coalescing behind Harris. The funds will help rebuild a war chest that was at risk of growing depleted in the weeks of uncertainty after Biden’s poor debate, as big donors paused fundraising.

One source of money was a Sunday evening call with a group called Win With Black Women, which the Harris campaign said had netted $1.6 million.

Overall, Sunday ranked as the third-largest single day in ActBlue’s history. The all-time high came the day after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, when ActBlue processed roughly $73.5 million. The second-highest was the date after the first debate between Biden and former President Donald Trump, which coincided with a key fundraising deadline.

Monday was on pace to be another huge day for donations, with ActBlue zooming past $30 million processed by midafternoon. The ActBlue ticker includes all online donations made on the platform, including for House and Senate candidates, as well as left-leaning nonprofit groups.

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