More than 1.5 million new donors donated to Vice President Harris’ campaign in just the last 11 days of July, according to a New York Times analysis of donor data submitted to the Federal Election Commission.
The US Vice President also received great support from donors to President Joe Biden’s previous campaign. About 680,000 people who donated to Mr. Biden, accounting for more than a third of the US President’s total donors, switched to donating to Ms. Harris in the 11 days mentioned above.
A total of more than half a million people on July 21 and more than 600,000 people on July 22 donated more than $80 million to the Democratic presidential campaign through ActBlue, the party’s official fundraising platform. To date, the campaign has raised more than $183 million through ActBlue.
By looking at both donor profiles and voter registration records, the New York Times analysis found that Vice President Harris’s new donors are much younger than President Biden’s past donors. Only 10% of Biden’s donors in July were under 45, compared with 28% of Harris’s.
Harris’s female donors under 45 are more than double that of Biden’s at 17%. Younger men are also giving to the 59-year-old vice president than her boss. Across all age groups, more than 60% of Democratic presidential campaign donors this year are women.
Geographically, Biden and Harris’ donors are similar, with a majority of Harris’ donors coming from more educated areas, as reflected in their ZIP codes, where more than half are owned by people 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree.
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A breakdown by ZIP code also shows that the percentage of first-time small donors to the vice president comes from places where more than 5% of the population is black, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, the gap between the previous and current Democratic presidential candidates in 2024 is negligible when looking at the percentage of middle-income households.
The New York Times analysis did not include direct contributions to Ms. Harris’s campaign from major donors, fundraising committees or super PACs that did not go through the ActBlue platform.
Details of the donations from major donors will not be disclosed until October, when fundraising committees associated with US presidential candidates’ campaigns are required to file reports with the country’s Federal Election Commission.
But based on small-donor power alone, late July was the most important fundraising period of the entire campaign cycle for President Joe Biden, or Vice President Kamala Harris, and the most profitable month for Democratic fundraising on ActBlue since the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Donors had threatened to cut off funding to Democrats after President Biden’s disappointing debate performance against former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. But that all changed after Vice President Harris became the new face of the Democratic Party in the race for the White House.
In July alone, Harris’s campaign raised more than $310 million, more than double the amount raised by her opponent. Trump’s campaign said it raised $138.7 million in the same period.
In total, Vice President Harris’ campaign has raised about $500 million since President Biden picked her to be the next president of the United States. Including Biden’s previous fundraising, that figure tops $1 billion. This is an unprecedented amount of money, reflecting donor enthusiasm for the Democratic presidential nominee ahead of the November 5 election.
