How Kalshi And Polymarket Did On Election Day
Roundup: Sweepstakes casino MyPrize is launching a prediction market in a deal with Crypto.com; more on Gemini's aspirations to get into PMs; Genius Sports CEO talks opportunity in Q3 earnings.
US Election Day is always going to be a big day at prediction markets moving forward, even if it’s not a presidential election year.
There are two main ways I am going to look at how Election Day went for Kalshi and Polymarket: pricing and volume.
Pricing
The two big prediction markets priced Democratic victories in the three biggest elections on Tuesday as heavy favorites. And Dems won all three — New York City mayor, New Jersey governor and Virginia governor.
Polls and prediction markets weren’t in a huge amount of disagreement with the relatively small sample of elections, however. Late polls from Atlas Intel had the New Jersey and NYC races much closer than they ended up being, but generally polls had Dems winning all the races.
The one outlier might have been New Jersey, where a lot of polls had Mikie Sherrill with a pretty small lead within the margin of error, while prediction markets never really wavered on the chances of her victory. You can argue that prediction markets priced this better than polls.
Prediction markets also had “margin of victory” markets for the major races, and the results there were a bit more mixed.
In the NJ governor market at Kalshi and Polymarket, Kalshi priced “less than 0%” as the favorite; it appears Sherrill will win by double digits:
Polymarket seemed to price it better, with 6-9% being the favorite early on Election Day.
It was a similar story for Zohran Mamdani’s victory in NYC.
Kalshi priced a Mamdani victory of more than 24% as the favorite; it appears he will end up winning by high single digits:
Polymarket had 10-20% as the most likely favorite; it now prices 0-10% as more than 99%:
So, getting the winner: Pretty good! Getting the margin of victory right: A work in progress.
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Volume
How much interest was there in election trading/betting on Election Day? A lot!
Kalshi saw $73 million in trading volume on Tuesday on political markets. That was still less than its sports markets, which accounted for more than 50% of trading for the day. There was $177 million in total volume:
A majority of trading was on markets related to NYC mayor (percentages below show the markets’ share of all political trading volume):
Kalshi ended up seeing $120 million in trading volume over the course of the summer and fall on the NYC mayoral race.
At Polymarket, there was considerably more volume on election markets. NYC mayor alone clocked in at almost $430 million over the course of the race.
I don’t track Polymarket volume myself, but this tracking site had Polymarket at $156 million in volume on Tuesday.
One more footnote, I am a little late on sharing this Substack on elections and prediction markets:
Prediction markets news roundup
MyPrize Becomes the First Social Gaming Business to Offer Prediction Markets in Strategic Partnership with Crypto.com (press release): “MyPrize, the fastest growing social gaming business in the US, today announced a strategic partnership with Crypto.com | Derivatives North America (CDNA), a CFTC-registered exchange and clearinghouse and an affiliate of Crypto.com, to launch MyPrize Markets, a first of its kind product allowing users to access social gaming and prediction markets for the first time in one unified platform. As Crypto.com’s first social gaming partner, MyPrize will leverage the company’s enterprise-grade infrastructure to deliver an engaging and intuitive prediction market experience to its massive global user base, now numbering over 1 million+.
“We are excited to partner with Crypto.com to launch all new prediction market products like sports, events, crypto, and more to our million+ users in the US and abroad. Together we will lean in and deliver fun and engaging experiences for our players and bring major enhancements to the social, livestreaming content, and community engagement that the MyPrize platform fosters,” said Zach Bruch, Founder & CEO of MyPrize. “After exploring the market, it quickly became obvious to us that Crypto.com has by far the market leading infrastructure for institutional and enterprise scale. Together we will be able to deliver this first of its kind product offering to all of MyPrize’s users and onboard our billions in volume into the MyPrize Markets product.”
Prediction markets have rapidly evolved from niche financial instruments to mainstream forecasting tools, increasingly used as leading indicators across industries. MyPrize Markets will bring this innovation to all new audiences by combining the power of prediction markets with class leading user experience and design, delivering all new levels of social entertainment across livestreaming, gaming, markets, and more, all in one unified platform.
This strategic partnership continues MyPrize’s explosive growth in 2025 and further cements its market position as the leading social gaming and entertainment platform. MyPrize Markets will offer prediction markets across sports, politics, cryptocurrency, and more, all integrated directly with MyPrize’s livestreaming platform.
MyPrize Markets is a reinvention of the prediction market status quo, and prioritizes an elegant, frictionless, and user centric experience. Today, prediction markets are for traders; but soon, MyPrize is bringing markets to everyone for the first time. The platform takes a user-first approach, fusing MyPrize’s signature livestreaming and social capabilities with event-based market participation so users and creators alike can connect and explore conversations and events together in real-time.
“We are seeing a massive change in how financial markets are converging with other products. We have been at the forefront of the convergence of crypto with TradFi. Now, we are at the forefront of a similar convergence with live social platforms and financial markets with our partner, MyPrize. Together, we are positioned to grow, innovate, and be the leader in prediction market products, which allow information discovery of what matters to retail users,” said Travis McGhee, Managing Director, Global Head of Capital Markets at Crypto.com. “This next generation of financial markets will require velocity and scale, qualities that Zach and his team at MyPrize have – they bring best in class experiences to their userbase and billions in volume to Crypto.com. This partnership will make MyPrize the first integrated app allowing users to access markets, gaming, livestreaming, and social all in one application, which will level-up prediction markets for the first time.”
💡My Take: The creep of prediction markets into new online spaces continues with the first integration of prediction markets into a sweepstakes casino. We’ve also seen announcements and integrations with a fantasy pick’em app (Underdog), a website (Hollywood.com), crypto platforms (Jupiter), a social media platform (Truth Social) and financial platforms (Robinhood, Webull).
There is basically no endpoint for how far all of this can go. This is what we saw when Underdog did a deal with Crypto.com as a “tech supplier” and not as a futures commission merchant. (The latter is how Robinhood works with Kalshi.) Anyone with a wallet and/or an online presence could in theory launch a prediction market in partnership with a CFTC-registered designated contract market.
Gemini is getting into prediction markets: I did a quick blast last night on the news that the crypto platform, but in case you missed it, from Bloomberg (paywall):
“Gemini Space Station Inc., the crypto exchange founded by billionaires Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, is preparing to offer prediction market contracts, according to people familiar with plans. …Gemini has discussed launching products as soon as possible, some of the people said, who asked not to be identified as the conversations were private.”
That a crypto platform wants to get into prediction markets is not necessarily earth-shattering news. Presumably, everyone in the crypto space will eventually get into prediction markets.
This is an interesting development, especially if we think of recent history and the CFTC. Consider that the Winklevoss twins were the loudest opponents of the original pick to lead the CFTC, Brian Quintenz, who also happened to be a Kalshi board member. They appeared to lead the charge to get his nomination nixed; we now have a new pick to chair the CFTC, Mike Selig.
Gemini has also been in process as a designated contract market for some time as “Gemini Titan", even before the May date listed on the CFTC website. The Gemini DCM rulebook dates back to 2024, and the LLC was formed in 2020.
Gemini’s pending entrance into prediction markets further underlines the idea that the space is going to become increasingly crowded on both the B2B and B2C sides.
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Data company Genius Sports talks prediction markets on Q3 earnings: Here’s some of the call involving CEO Mark Locke:
“Before we conclude, I want to briefly address prediction markets, a topic of frequent discussion over the last few months. In an effort to preemptively address questions, let me share our perspective. We are observing the developments around prediction markets carefully. We must always comply with applicable laws and regulatory requirements and we place a great deal of importance on the views of our regulators and commercial partners.”
“As they evolve and mature, prediction markets may provide a meaningful new opportunity for Genius Sports in expanding the addressable market. While these products are nascent, they are evolving rapidly and the need for Genius official league data, marks and logos and integrity solutions will only grow as prediction markets become more sophisticated. This means that we are extremely well placed should we decide to engage. With regard to timing, we are being extremely considered and deliberate in our approach. We will work closely with key stakeholders across the ecosystem, our league partners, regulators, existing customers and indeed, the prediction markets themselves to determine the next steps and we are confident in our ability to capitalize on this opportunity in a responsible and sustainable way, if we feel all of the requirements we need to be in place to participate in this market are met.”
“Given the early and evolving nature of this market, we won’t be providing additional detail on this call, but I want to be clear, if we are confident that prediction markets will meet our robust regulatory and commercial thresholds, these developments could result in positive developments for Genius Sports and our future growth.” … And later:
Question: “Mark, just curious on the prediction market here, obviously creating a lot of excitement for the industry. Do you think this could be a driver of legalization across the U.S. and some key states here that have been kind of sticky and not legalizing? And then the follow-up, Mark, would be, do you have any concerns where the prediction markets are competing against some of your partners today that they could take some market share in the near term or long term?”
Locke: “Yes. I mean sort of to take it backwards and I think we made some pretty direct comments in the prepared remarks that we see on a general principle, anything that expands the TAM and expands the market is a good thing for us. We’re well placed and we believe that there’s a need for official Genius data, league data, marks and logos, integrity solutions across the Board, and that’s only going to grow. So in terms of the prediction markets, we — frankly, as I said in the prepared comments, we see there is potentially an opportunity which could be very exciting. But again, we keep a very tight eye on regulation. As you know, you follow us for a very long time. We’re very focused on making sure that we operate in a highly regulated fashion that we work with regulators and we work with the right people in the market.”
“So at the moment, we’re watching it very closely. It’s not — it’s a topic of frequent conversation, not only externally but also internally. But at the moment, we feel very well placed. We feel like there could be a large opportunity but we’ve got to watch the regulatory space and how that’s evolving over time.”
Researcher Examines: What If FanDuel Calls The Bluff On State License Revocation And Pursues Prediction Market Strategy? (InGame): “The emergence of sports prediction markets creates massive risk for FanDuel: if they stand down on entering sports prediction markets, they risk missing what may be the biggest shift in the industry since the repeal of PASPA,” writes Chicago-based researcher and semi-professional sports bettor Adam Robinson, a board member of sports betting advocacy group American Bettors’ Voice. “On the other hand, entering these markets could jeopardize their state-regulated business model.”
“Robinson’s new paper, obtained by InGame, seeks to identify the point at which it would make economic and strategic sense for FanDuel (as an example) to shove its chips to the center of the table, call the regulators’ bluff, and enter the prediction markets arena — inclusive of sports events contacts — before such time that the courts and federal government offer total clarity on what is and isn’t lawful at the federal level.”