Developing Kalshi's Whole Midterm Book Is $1.4 Billion. Last NFL Weekend Was $9.44 Billion. Elections Are the Small Business Carrying Outsized Political Risk.

Editor's note: TrueEdge builds odds tools that include prediction-market prices and earns affiliate commissions from licensed sportsbooks. Our standing position is that states should not criminalise federally registered exchanges. This piece argues about that fight; weigh the conflict.

Kalshi's midterm book passed $1.4 billion on Tuesday, on data the company gave Fortune, as reported by Crypto Briefing, which says that already beats what Kalshi did on the 2024 presidential race. It is a real number and a large one, and it is also about 15% of what the same exchange handled on the last two days of NFL Week 8: $9.44 billion in notional volume, according to Aldrin Research data reported by Covers.

That comparison should change how anyone reads tonight. The state lawsuits are mostly a fight over sports. In Congress, and in the public argument, election contracts draw some of the sharpest heat, and measured by volume they are a sideline to the business that pays for the exchange. They are also the contracts that give it a public purpose. Kalshi's elections operation is a small line of trade carrying outsized political exposure, and we think that trade is worth it only if the exchange treats surveillance as seriously as it treats the CBS graphic.

A Senate race and a football game

The cleanest measure is one market against one market. Texas Senate, the race between James Talarico and Ken Paxton, had drawn more than $98 million at Kalshi by Tuesday afternoon, Covers reported. On October 1 the same contract stood at $16.4 million. Eagles-Commanders drew $96.2 million in single-game trading on Sunday.

So a marquee Senate race, with months on the board and a late surge, is about one good NFL window. Then look at what really moves the total. Kalshi's Sunday combos alone came to $3.37 billion, more than twice its whole midterm book. Sunday's single NFL games were $457.1 million.

Those sports figures fell. Kalshi's weekend was down 6.2% from $10.06 billion, the industry total stayed under $13 billion with Polymarket U.S. reporting only partially and one operator's Saturday figures missing, and the prior weekend's $14 billion remains the record. One soft week against an all-time high proves little. It does not narrow the gap by anything that matters here.

We cannot give you one clean election number

Nobody should quote these totals as though they agree. Kalshi's figure was $1.33 billion in Reuters' account of Monday's report and above $1.4 billion by Tuesday. Polymarket shows up as about $600 million in an unattributed tally carried by Crypto Briefing and about $145 million on congressional markets alone in Anti-Corruption Data Collective figures reported by Reuters. Those measure different things, and neither is a full picture of the other.

Single markets are messier. Covers gives Kalshi's House control market as $117 million in its headline and more than $240 million in its text; Crypto Briefing has a $181 million House winner contract and $251 million on congressional control. We do not know which pairing is right. Our comparison survives every version, because even the largest number for the whole book stays well under one NFL weekend. The odd result that does hold up: the Los Angeles mayor's race, at more than $109 million on Kalshi and more than $160 million across platforms, out-traded the Texas Senate race.

All of this is notional, and none of it is revenue. Nothing we read breaks out what Kalshi earned in fees from elections against sports, and a contract priced at 93 cents, where Democrats sat for the House on Tuesday, has little room left in it for anybody. Readers should treat the volume comparison as a size comparison only.

Where the exposure sits

On the other side of that ledger is everything arriving at once.

Senators Elizabeth Warren and John Curtis gave Kalshi and Polymarket until today to answer seven questions about insider trading and wash trading in election markets, including how many suspected cases each has found since January 1 and how many went to the CFTC or police. "We are particularly troubled by election-related event contracts," they wrote. We found no public answer from either company as of this afternoon. Kalshi's enforcement chief told The Hill the company bars insider trading and manipulation, and a Kalshi source said it uses FEC payroll data to block candidates and staffers. Polymarket did not immediately respond to The Hill, according to Bitcoin.com's account of that reporting.

In Maryland, the Baltimore Sun counted more than $1.1 million in state election trades despite an election-betting ban. State Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis asked the State Prosecutor in July to look at it, and that office won't say whether it has acted. In Utah, the charges filed October 28 against Kalshi and its two founders run to 14 counts, 13 of them felonies, though those counts concern gambling promotion rather than elections specifically. A federal status conference before Judge Robert Shelby is set for Friday.

$1.1 million is a rounding error. It is also the kind of figure a state prosecutor can put in a sentence, next to a ban written specifically for election betting. Election contracts hand opponents their easiest argument: this is not a hedge on anything, and it touches the vote itself.

The best case against us

The strongest reply is that we are measuring the wrong thing. Elections are the product that gets an exchange into the newsroom. CBS News, CNBC, the Associated Press and Fox News Media are all Kalshi data partners, and no network chyron is going to carry a same-game combo's price. That attention is customer acquisition and legal armor at once. It turns "gambling site" into "information market," and it may be worth far more than its fee line. Tonight's trading could also add a big chunk to the total, since we are writing before most of the results and the final number isn't in.

We accept most of that. Elections are the reason these companies get a hearing in Washington, and that is exactly why the failure mode is so expensive. If a candidate-trading or staff-leak case surfaces out of tonight's markets, the damage won't stay in the election book that caused it. It lands on the $9.44 billion too. The senators' letter already cites candidates trading their own races, a May 2025 case the CFTC described and three more Kalshi disclosed in April, plus a 2024 estimate that about a third of Polymarket's presidential volume was likely wash trading.

We still think criminalising a federally registered exchange is the wrong remedy. We also think "our volume is mostly football" is not a defense anyone should be comfortable making in court.

Here is what would change our view. If election-night trading alone approaches a full NFL weekend, the size argument dies. If Week 9 shows a lasting lift from customers who arrived for the midterms, the acquisition case gets real evidence. If both companies publish their counts from the senators' question list, the surveillance point weakens. We will look for all three.

One vote the books paid for

Sportsbooks have their own ballot exposure tonight. Nebraska is voting on Initiatives 440 and 441, and both must pass to authorise mobile wagering. FanDuel and DraftKings each put in nearly $10.3 million behind the measures, per Covers, and Kalshi's own market had passage at 69% and 68% on October 28. The licensed industry put up more than $20 million to win a state by the ordinary democratic route, while its rivals trade a contract on the result. No results were in when this published.

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