EL PASO, Tx., April 23, 2026: News broke yesterday that three political candidates were found to have placed bets on their chances of winning their respective political races. After being caught, the three have been disciplined for violating the rules. The scheme involves placing wagers on online prediction market platforms. Prediction market betting involves purchasing a share of a contract speculating a yes or a no outcome to a future event. Most bettors in speculative markets place bets on sporting events or the future of the economy. The payoff for a wager on a future event depends on both the event’s outcome and the agreed-upon odds. For example, if a wager is placed on the Dallas Cowboys and they win, the payout is based on the odds at which the be was placed.
Three congressional candidates were suspended from betting on election outcomes after they were found to be placing insider trading bets on their own election outcomes. Mark Moran, a Democrat running in the Virginia Democratic primary for Senate, Matt Klein in the Minnesota Democratic primary for Senate and in the Texas Republican primary, Ezekiel Enriquez running for a House seat were suspended.
Gambling on futures outcomes has been around for centuries.
Aristotle wrote about the first example of a derivatives market when he wrote about how olive farmers around 600 BC were forced to pay rent to use the olive presses. Thales used his knowledge of astronomy to predict a bumper crop for olives, leading him to secure the exclusive rights to the olive presses by paying small deposits for them. When the olive crop soared, he sublet his exclusive leases on the presses at a profit to the olive farmers.
Well known speculative bets include the 1920’s stock boom to the “dot-com” crash in the late 1990s. George Soros placed a $10 billion bet against the British Pound in 1992 betting that the British government would be forced to devalue the British Pound. On September 16, 1992 – “Black Wednesday” – Soros earned the nickname, “the man who broke the Bank of England,” when pocketed $1 billion in profits from his wager.
In 2024, online wagering reached $3.6 billion. A recent notable futures market example is an anonymous trader who won $400,000 betting on the downfall of Nicolás Maduro. Maduro was forcefully removed from Venezuela by U.S. forces on January 3rd. He remains in federal custody awaiting trial on drug trafficking criminal charges today.
Today, almost anyone can place online bets on futures markets from sports, crops, the U.S. economy, and many other predictions, including who will win an election. The top two online marketplaces are US-based Kalshi and crypto-based Polymarket. Polymarket was originally shutdown in 2022 by U.S. regulators but was allowed to return last year.
Betting on U.S. federal elections through speculative futures contracts grew in 2024 after a court ruling allowed U.S. users to place bets on who wins an election on the Kalshi platform. However, some states are trying to regulate betting on political outcomes.
Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois have set rules limiting the practice but the Trump administration has filed lawsuits arguing that the federal government is the only one that should regulate it.
Critics of gambling on political election outcomes argue that the bets can lead voters to believe that the bets are like polls showing who the likely winner will be, possibly skewing the results by keeping voters away from the polls because they may feel their candidate can’t win.
But betting on political outcomes in the U.S. can be traced back to George Washington in the form of “betting commissioners.” Betting on political outcomes on the New York markets led the New York Times in 1924 to editorialize that “Wall Street betting odds are ‘never wrong’,” suggesting that election betting could predict the election outcome. The resulting controversy led newspapers to start reporting less on betting activities as “unethical” gambling. This led to political outcome wagering to go underground as pressure on the stock exchanges led them to abandon futures contracts on political outcomes. But the betting on elections continued.
Today, there are several futures contracts on political outcomes where betters can place bets on the election results on Kalshi. People are placing bets on which counties Ken Paxton win in the Republican runoff election next month. According to the futures market on Kalshi, Paxton has a 33% chance of winning El Paso. It costs 40 cents to buy a Yes contract that Paxton wins in El Paso. As of this morning 528 Yes (Paxton wins El Paso) contracts have been purchased.
For the Texas House 23 seat, betters are betting that Republican Brandon Herrera defeats Democrat Katy Padilla Stout. El Pasoans wanting to bet that the Democrat wins the race can buy a contract for 31 cents this morning.
In another El Paso political futures contract, Adam Bauman is expected to overwhelmingly defeat Manuel Barraza to be the Republican nominee to challenge Veronica Escobar on the November ballot. In case anyone wants to bet on convicted former judge, Barraza, to win – the contract will cost almost eight pennies to buy the Yes contract as of this morning.
El Paso’s congresswoman, Veronica Escobar, is expected to have an easy win in November according to the bets placed so far in her race.
The Veronica Escobar Wager
On the Kalshi online wagering platform, the futures contract on whether Escobar wins her re-election in November shows that betters can place a Yes contact for 99 cents and a No contract for under four pennies.
A No bet on Escobar can lead to a profit of around 96 cents per dollar wagered.
Other futures contract available on Kalshi for El Paso include whether the El Paso Locomotive FC wins their upcoming games.
As of today, wagering on who wins in the upcoming runoff elections and on the November ballot remains available. Likely legal challenges are unlikely to impact the ability to buy futures contracts in the 2026 elections.
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