People can now bet on the outcome of U.S. elections for the first time ever, just a few weeks before the vote for president in November. After a big court win, this big step forward has been made. Kalshi is a futures market that has made event contracts for betting on elections. Tarek Mansour, the founder of Akalshi, made headlines on the X platform on October 7: users can now legally trade outcomes such as the U.S. presidential election, the margin of victory, and the winners in each state.
It’s an important moment because this is the first time in U.S. history that an election betting market has opened. It might make other platforms possible, even Web3 systems like Polymarket. Kalshi has signed more than a dozen contracts that rely on the outcome of elections and two different political events in order to pay off. In some of the contracts, people have to say things like, “Will a candidate be the presidential nominee for their party?” “Will a political party win a seat in the Senate for the next term?”
Kalshi had to go through some tough times to get here. In September, the website won a case against the CFTC. At first, the CFTC said that bets for political events could not be put on the site. This time, the CFTC made a new case and asked the court to stop Kalshi from doing business. The court ruled in favor of the swap on October 2.
Kalshi is still not as well known as Polymarket, even though they won the case. More than $1 billion had been bet on the November presidential election by Polymarket as of October 2, while $775,000. Kalshi had won the same deal. Even the CFTC is worried about these election prediction markets because they think they could make the polls less fair. On the other hand, a lot of experts in the field say that these markets show how people really feel better than regular studies.
Since these court rulings set a high bar, more people may start betting on U.S. elections.
