The donation surge in the last day is the largest 24-hour fundraising sum in presidential history.

Democrats have poured $81m (£62m) in donations into Vice-President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday.

It is the largest 24-hour period of campaign funding in presidential history with more than 888,000 donors making contributions of less than $200 in the day after Mr Biden stepped aside.

“Grassroots supporters are energized and excited to support her as the Democratic nominee,” ActBlue, the progressive donation platform, said on X.

Donors who had pulled back their funding over concerns about Mr Biden’s age say they now intend to resume their support for the party.

The party raised over $27.5m in the first five hours of Ms Harris’ presidential campaign. That number nearly doubled by the end of the day. In 24 hours, the sum broke a presidential fundraising record.

  • wjrii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    Without passing judgment on whether it’s wise or not (though… clearly the current paradigm is not), the legal rationale is that the free speech implications of the US Constitution’s first amendment are extremely broad and permissive, even more so for explicitly political speech, and that money spent on political campaigns is effectively money spent to disseminate political speech. Restrictions therefore are very few, very light, and even where they exist they are very easy to effectively work around while remaining legal.