I’m very happy midterm season is over. Now my phone will finally stop lighting up every hour with texts and calls from local politicians’ lists I never signed up for.
I was up late watching the United States midterm results roll in, and afterward I found a Kalshi recap that caught my attention. Kalshi is a federally regulated U.S. prediction market where users buy and sell binary “Yes” or “No” contracts on the outcomes of real-world events. It’s claiming its users called 98% of midterm results before a single vote was counted.
Get enough people betting real money, and the market gets very good at calling elections. Midterm trading passed $2.5 billion, almost double the 2024 cycle.
Kalshi said the favorite on its markets won a staggering 98%, 479 of 487 races. Their traders priced Democratic control of the House at 99% by 8:10PM Eastern on election night.
This was originally posted as an Observation in Paper Towns · The Catalog · №013, an issue of my weekly newsletter The Catalog. You can Subscribe for weekly insights, or get in touch to talk about what this means for your business.