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Election Betting in the U.S.

Complete introduction to legal election betting in the U.S. including where to trade on elections, current odds, and what to look for.

by Chris Gerlacher

July 30, 2025

Trade on Prediction Markets » Election Betting in the U.S.

Election season is upon us, and there are plenty of legal election betting platforms to choose from for the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election. The United States has a long history of election betting. It fell out of favor after the combined pressures of Prohibition and the rise of scientific polling, but prediction markets have brought election betting back for the 21st century.

Prediction markets allow traders to buy and sell contracts with prices that match how likely traders think the event is to occur. So, a 50-cent contract has a 50% chance of occurring. (Although, there’s some nuance to the art of reading prediction market prices.)

The 2024 presidential election was a major breakout for prediction markets. Election markets can be read alongside polls, and in some cases, can make up for flaws in polling methodology. Here’s everything election traders need to know about placing election bets.

How to bet on elections

Legally betting on elections in the United States has never been easier. First, traders can choose one of the many regulated platforms, including:

Kalshi
PredictIt
Manifold
ForecastEx

Common election contracts include whether a candidate or party will win the presidential election. However, traders can also bet on which party will control each chamber of Congress and the balance of power among the House of Representatives, Senate, and presidency. Even individual state races are available on these platforms.

One of the standout features of prediction markets is their responsiveness to new information. Prices change in real time based on the information that bettors have available, whether it’s new polling information or a scandal threatening to tank an otherwise promising campaign. Sufficiently large prediction markets can act as windows into how traders with their own money at stake think races will play out before exit polls can catch up.

Placing these bets is easy, too. For example, Kalshi traders can select whether they’d like to bet “Yes” or “No” on an electoral question, choose the amount of money or number of contracts they’d like to stake, then confirm their orders. Traders also have the option to place limit orders, which only execute trades if prices hit certain limits by predetermined deadlines.

Types of legal election betting markets in the U.S.

While there are many election markets from gubernatorial races to the presidential scramble for 270 electoral college votes, two are particularly popular: the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential races.

2026 midterm prediction markets

The midterms are votes on the full House of Representatives and about one-third of the Senate. These races will decide Congress’s balance of power in Trump’s remaining two years in office.

If Democrats take the House, then they can block much of Trump’s domestic agenda. The Senate is likely to remain in Republican hands.

These markets are resolved based on either a consensus of reporting or from the Library of Congress. The composition of the next Congress will speak for itself, and bettors can turn to source agencies like the Library of Congress instead of waiting for someone else to tell them how the midterms played out.

2028 presidential election betting

The 2028 election will decide who sits in the White House, the House of Representatives, and another third of the Senate.

Both parties will face crucial decisions about their futures in 2028. The Republican Party will have to decide what their message to voters will be after three cycles of Donald Trump. No one has Trump’s unique hold on MAGA voters, so the 2028 nominee will have to court the movement’s voters even before the midterms.

The Democratic Party also has to rediscover its voice. Democrats have lost two elections to Trump, revealing substantial weaknesses in the Democratic coalition. The Republicans have become perceived as the party more aligned with working-class interests.

Individual Democrats like Bernie Sanders have given voice to populist anger against an elite class that has helped itself at the expense of ordinary Americans. However, the party has not rallied around them, and the Democrats still have to produce a compelling governing vision to be competitive in 2028.

Best election betting sites

There are many election betting sites out there, but our top four recommendations are safe, legal, and regulated.

Kalshi

Kalshi is among the most well-known prediction markets. It made legal election betting possible by suing its regulator, the CFTC. As a commercial prediction market platform, its market selection is among the most diverse. Traders will find the most popular national races, state election outcomes, and even foreign elections.

How to sign up

Signing up for Kalshi is straightforward. First, enter your personal information, including your Social Security Number. Since Kalshi is a derivatives exchange, it requires the same information that any other financial exchange would.

Once they’re registered, traders can select their preferred deposit methods, fund their accounts, and navigate to the market where they’d like to make their first trades.

PredictIt

PredictIt is an academic prediction market that got a no-action letter from the CFTC in 2014. The letter allowed PredictIt to offer election contracts as long as it limited the platform’s profitability through trade and position limits.

Traders can enter their personal information, make a small deposit, then select which market they’d like to bet “Yes” or “No” on.

ForecastEx

ForecastEx is a subsidiary of Interactive Brokers. These event contracts focus on the presidential election, party control of Congress, and gubernatorial races.

To sign up for ForecastEx, customers must create accounts with Interactive Brokers. It involves a lengthy know-your-customer process that includes personal information and self-reported knowledge of event contracts and the relevant types of contracts customers want to trade.
Only then can traders connect their preferred deposit methods. However, traders with margin accounts must make a minimum deposit of $2,000. Traders with cash accounts have no such minimum deposit requirement.

Manifold

Manifold is a free-to-play prediction market platform where customers can create their own markets and place trades using Mana, the platform’s fictional currency.

Traders can register for Manifold with their names and emails. Then they can use the first 1,000 Mana they get for signing up to place their trades. There are many more niche markets to search, so Manifold is worth exploring.

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History of election betting

Election betting has a long history as an American past-time. At least since Lincoln’s administration, election trades have been available on financial exchanges. “Betting commissioners” would set odds and accept election trades. Some presidential election wagers could have higher trading volume than stocks or bonds.

These markets were robust predictors before George Gallup popularized scientific polling. From 1868 to 1940, only one candidate who was favored to win a month before the election lost. (It was Howard Hughes in 1916 who lost to Woodrow Wilson.)

Today, there is greater access to national information. A news broadcast on a major news network can reach all 50 states, and social media adds even more immediacy. While betting odds are no longer as crucial as they once were, prediction markets have certain uses that can make them valuable in noisy news environments.

Benefits of election prediction markets

Aggregating diverse opinions can lead to accurate forecasts and even outperform polls and expert panels. There are conditions for a prediction market to successfully generate a useful forecast, though. A crowd must not only be diverse, but each member of it must make their own judgment about the odds without being unduly influenced by other traders. The market must allow error-cancelling among extremists on both sides of a question to whittle down to a reasonable price.

One of a prediction markets’ best features is its ability to track probability changes in real time. Once new relevant information is made public, contract prices change immediately. Live debates and mention markets during election seasons are among the most reactive markets on prediction market platforms.

Finally, prediction markets solve an important incentive problem. If traders are wrong, they’re the ones who are punished in the form of financial losses. This is meant to incentivize traders to do enough research to bid a reasonable price on prediction market platforms.

However, relying on “skin in the game” to incentivize truth-seeking is only one part of a prediction market platform with predictive value. The other components of a wise crowd must also be present for a platform to have predictive value.

Risks and limitations

Prediction markets are not infallible. They rely on publicly available information; otherwise their forecasts aggregate speculation instead of useful data. The “pope” markets caught many traders by surprise, because the people with all the relevant information were locked in conclave instead of trading on DCMs. In contrast, the 2024 presidential election markets that favored Trump earlier than polls did had much publicly available and useful information to aggregate.

Some markets can be subject to external influence or market manipulation. Markets that are especially thin can be vulnerable to groups placing trades to influence prices based on their wishes instead of a broader set of facts.

Finally, some prediction market contracts face court challenges. Traders should remain aware of the laws and regulations governing their chosen platforms before placing bets on them.

Prediction markets vs. polls

Feature	Prediction Markets	Polls
Basis	Financial stakes, trading	Survey responses, modeling
Responsiveness	Real-time	Periodic
Accuracy	Historically strong, but not perfect	Varies
Incentives	Financial and reputational	Personal and professional reputation
Limitations	Can be inconsistent or manipulated if structured badly	Can be biased, poorly sampled, or weighted improperly

Polls and prediction markets have different strengths and weaknesses.

Prediction markets offer unmatched real-time updates of events, while pollsters may gather data every few days or weeks. They can be quite accurate, but models from FiveThirtyEight and The Economist were able to outdo prediction markets in some House races. However, prediction markets performed better in the presidential election.

Polls are better described as snapshots of what a sample thinks instead of a forecast of how it will vote. Their predictive value comes from how well the pollster’s weights correspond to the next voting population, a difficult feat that demands insider knowledge of how different demographics are changing their voting patterns.

Election betting tips for beginners

New traders should keep a few things in mind before diving into election betting.

First, don’t spend more than you can afford to lose. America’s legal election markets are volatile financial instruments whose value can change as rapidly as the state of a political race. Traders who find themselves chasing losses should use one of the consumer protection features, like limiting their bets or time sizes on a prediction market platform. However, the availability of consumer protection features varies across platforms, so traders should remain aware of their options.

Next, new traders should get some idea of the reasons supporting “Yes” and “No” positions in an election market. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each position provides a better idea of whether a market price is reasonable and what a better one could be if it isn’t.

Finally, be aware of how quickly the odds of an event occurring can change. Event contract prices react so quickly because new information can transform the way an event’s likelihood is viewed, like the aftermath of Joe Biden’s debate against Donald Trump.

Prediction markets can be used for financial hedging, exposure, forecasting, or entertainment. No one should bankrupt themselves over these contracts.

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