Executives from the online prediction market Kalshi came to Washington on Wednesday to debut a new “Midterms Hub” for placing bets on the November elections.
The hub displays live-updating odds for every House, Senate and gubernatorial election, odds that are generated by users trading in a digital futures market.
“It brings together the wisdom of the crowd,” said Riva Sciuto, Kalshi’s head of external affairs. “People are putting their money where their mouth is in a way that is very different than … traditional polling. People are trading on what they think will happen, not on the outcome they want to happen.”
As of Wednesday, Kalshi gives Republicans a 55% chance of maintaining their majority in the Senate, and Democrats an 83% chance of gaining control of the House.
Kalshi also offers wagers on voter turnout and margins of victory, as well as on the exact number of seats each party will win or lose.
Kalshi executives have been in Washington huddling with lawmakers who want to slap new regulations on the increasingly popular prediction markets. Now, the “Midterms Hub” brings the wagering even closer to Congress.
“They ought to be prohibited from betting on elections and wars,” fumed Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat. “There should be prohibitions on the insider information and market manipulation. The same rules that apply to internet gambling ought to apply to prediction markets.”
Kalshi officials said the senator knows the company does not list markets related to war.
Ms. Sciuto said that all market manipulation and insider trading is strictly prohibited on Kalshi.
“It’s illegal,” she said, adding the company cracks down on abuses to ensure “trust in the platform.”
“It’s like committing a crime in broad daylight. It’s very transparent, and because of that, we can very clearly see if the market is being manipulated,” Ms. Sciuto said.
Still, a rash of insider trading scandals has Congress eying new regulations for prediction markets.
President Trump’s teleprompter operator, Gabriel Perez, was accused of pocketing more than $100,000 from bets on Kalshi about what the president would say in his speeches. Ex-reality TV star Mark Moran, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia, admitted to betting on his own election bid and was suspended from trading on Kalshi.
Founded in 2018, Kalshi allows users to bet on outcomes in fields such as finance, sports, and politics. A 2024 federal court decision allowed it to offer wagers on congressional races with regulation from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Although the service is similar to gambling, it is not regulated by typical gambling regulators. Users set the odds through their transactions, rather than betting on odds set by the house, as in a traditional casino or sportsbook.
At the Washington event, Nicole Kagan, a researcher for Kalshi, boasted of the company’s track record for picking winners.
“Nine times out of 10, three months out from an election day even occurring, we can tell you who’s going to win,” she said.
She displayed a chart showing that 87% of the candidates that markets favored at that point before election day ultimately won.
Kalshi also has become a valuable resource for users seeking information on the state of races, Ms. Sciuto said.
“75% of people who come to Kalshi, they don’t even trade,” she said. “They come just to look at the data … and we’re seeing that at record levels, specifically with election data and election information.”
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