Over the past several months, we've been closely tracking performance across ConnectBlue partner newsletters — spanning trusted Democratic-aligned publishers, advocacy organizations, and independent writers.
We recently cross-checked these internal observations against beehiiv's 2026 State of Newsletters report, which analyzed 28 billion emails sent to 255 million readers in 2025.
Across the 28B email dataset:
Up from 37.98% in 2024
Held steady — near-universal inbox placement
Improved sender authentication and list hygiene led to near-universal inbox placement. This mirrors what we're seeing across ConnectBlue publishers — well-maintained, opt-in lists are resilient — even as other digital channels become more volatile.
In a cycle where SMS filtering is tightening and social reach continues to fluctuate, the inbox remains structurally dependable.
Issue-focused and identity-driven categories exceed global open-rate averages by this margin — mapping directly to Democratic-aligned media.
Readers engaging with values-rooted political newsletters are self-selected participants in an ongoing conversation.
For campaigns and PACs, this is not just reach — it's aligned reach.
We're increasingly focusing our campaigns on engagement behavior, not just sender volume. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection has reduced the reliability of raw open-rate tracking.
The industry response — reflected in the report — is a pivot toward:
That shift aligns directly with our political objectives. Inside ConnectBlue placements, we focus on what happens after exposure:
Newsletter environments allow cleaner attribution than most social environments and operate inside a privacy-safe, first-party framework.
From the 28B email analysis:
Delivered the highest open rate at 44.46%
Clustered around ~40% open rate
Delivered the highest CTR — Saturday 3.39%, Sunday 3.40%
Of successful newsletters send weekly
Outperform high-volume link digests
This stability is rare in today's media ecosystem. For political programs, it enables disciplined testing, predictable deployment, and structured sequencing across newsletters, CTV, and digital.
Newsletters are evolving into community hubs and multi-channel media businesses. We're seeing the same across ConnectBlue partners — newsletters anchoring broader ecosystems that include:
For buyers, that means placements are increasingly integrated into larger engagement strategies, not isolated impressions.
The data confirms Email remains:
ConnectBlue aggregates premium Democratic-aligned newsletter inventory across trusted publishers and advocacy platforms, enabling:
This is not open exchange inventory. It is permission-based reach across engaged Democratic and Independent voters.
ConnectBlue is bringing together the Democrat-aligned Digital Ecosystem through:
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What We're Seeing Across Our Newsletter Network