Midterm Election Betting Tops $220M — Double the Entire 2024 Cycle — as Public Opposition Mounts
Traders have wagered more than $220 million on the 2026 congressional midterms across Kalshi and Polymarket, more than double the $92 million bet across the entire 2024 cycle, according to a Reuters analysis of Anti-Corruption Data Collective data published October 14. The 2026 cycle has more than 21,000 individual markets, up from 463 tracked in 2024. Volume is concentrated in a few races, led by the Texas Senate contest. The growth comes despite a Reuters/Ipsos poll finding that most Americans oppose using prediction markets to bet on elections, and amid continuing concern from election officials about integrity and insider trading.
Traders have wagered more than $220 million on the 2026 congressional midterm elections across Kalshi and Polymarket, more than double the $92 million bet across the entire 2024 congressional cycle, according to a Reuters analysis of data from the Anti-Corruption Data Collective published October 14, 2026. The scale of the expansion is captured in the number of markets: the ACDC examined more than 21,000 individual markets covering the 2026 midterms across the two platforms through September 30, compared with just 463 markets tracked for the 2024 cycle. The platforms have created contracts for essentially every dimension of the midterms, from party control of each chamber down to individual House and Senate races and a range of more granular outcomes. The $220 million figure is a conservative count focused on congressional races; a broader CNN analysis that included all election-related markets put combined 2026 election volume above $750 million.
The volume is heavily concentrated rather than evenly distributed. Most of the $220 million is tied to a small number of high-profile races, led by the Texas Senate contest, with significant activity also on the Senate races in Maine, Michigan, and South Carolina. The concentration reflects a basic feature of prediction market liquidity: trading clusters in the races that are most competitive, most nationally salient, and most heavily covered in the media, while the hundreds of less-watched down-ballot races attract little volume. This pattern has a direct bearing on the accuracy debate. The high-volume, closely-contested races are where prediction markets aggregate information most effectively and where their forecasts are most reliable; the thinly-traded races can be as noisy as sparse polling. The concentration in marquee Senate races is consistent with the overall market picture, in which Democrats have moved to roughly 60% favorites for Senate control and around 90% for the House.
The commercial success of election markets is running ahead of public acceptance. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that most Americans oppose the use of prediction markets to wager on elections, reflecting a persistent unease about the commodification of the democratic process that has accompanied the sector's growth. Election officials have separately raised concerns throughout 2026 that prediction market odds could be used to amplify disinformation — when market prices diverge from polling, candidates on either side of the gap cite the discrepancy as evidence of fraud or hidden momentum — and that the markets create insider-trading risks when campaign staff, pollsters, or officials with non-public information can trade on it. Kalshi has implemented protections, blocking election trades by politicians and campaign workers, and both platforms maintain the insider-trading controls required by federal law. But the enforcement record is imperfect, as the three-year suspension of North Carolina congressional candidate Laurie Buckhout for trading on her own race demonstrated.
The midterm markets are the highest-stakes test to date of prediction markets as an electoral forecasting tool and as a political-integrity concern. The November 3 elections arrive with more than $220 million wagered, more than 21,000 markets live, and the sector operating under intense legal and political scrutiny — the SCOTUS cert petitions, the CFTC's swap rule, the state enforcement actions, and the reporting on political entanglements all unresolved. If the markets prove accurate on November 3, the platforms will cite the result as evidence of their forecasting value and social utility. If they miss badly on a high-profile race, as happened in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary earlier in 2026, critics will cite it as evidence that the markets are gambling dressed up as forecasting. Either way, the 2026 midterms are the moment when the 'first prediction-market election' framing is tested against actual results, and the outcome will shape both the public perception and the regulatory trajectory of election markets heading into the 2028 presidential cycle.
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Recent updates
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