Kalshi bets big on US midterms with new election hub for polls, campaign data and news

As prediction markets are gaining traction in political forecasting, Kalshi has unveiled a new election hub to make its platform the primary destination for US election odds ahead of the November midterms.

Kalshi said on Wednesday that it will publish traditional campaign polls, fundraising data, campaign news and trading data for its own elections markets on the new hub. The target audience ranges from political junkies and retail traders to candidates and their campaigns.

“Candidates can see exactly what is and isn’t moving the needle in their race, instead of waiting days for polling to catch up,” the company said in a news release. “That immediacy separates what’s actually shifting perception from what’s just dominating social feeds, and lets campaigns benchmark their trajectory.”

The launch marks Kalshi's latest effort to position prediction markets as a credible alternative to traditional polling and media coverage. Co-founder Tarek Mansour has argued that market participants collectively reflect the "wisdom of the crowds." Critics, however, argue that prediction markets are vulnerable to insider trading and manipulation, which could influence public perceptions around elections.

Politics remains one of the most popular subjects for betting outside of sports, and trading has already seen significant growth this year ahead of the November midterms, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of Kalshi data on Dune Analytics.

Prediction markets swell to 27% of sports bets during World Cup

Prediction-market trading has surged during a blowout World Cup, far outpacing the growth at traditional sportsbooks and driving home the competitive threat that companies like Kalshi now pose to the sports-gambling industry.

Kalshi, the biggest player, has repeatedly broken its own trading records during the World Cup, doubling the peak it hit just a week before the tournament began, during the New York Knicks’ dramatic playoff run, and running at nearly 10 times what it was at many points early in the year.

H2 Gambling Capital estimates that prediction-market activity was around 27% of all legal US sports-betting volume during the World Cup, up from 9% at the beginning of the year, based on public data from the tournament’s first month. The comparison is imprecise because prediction markets and gambling companies calculate activity differently, and the sportsbooks have not yet released their recent internal numbers. But it illustrates the speed at which the exchanges are gaining ground.

In a stark sign of how the competitive dynamic has changed, Kalshi had more daily users on its phone app during the tournament than either of the two largest US online sports-gambling apps, DraftKings and FanDuel, according to Apptopia.