Can You Legally Bet on Elections?

The question everyone asks around election season: can you actually put money on who wins? The answer used to be a clean 'no' in the United States. Now it's more like 'yes, but through a specific kind of platform, and the rules are still being written.' Here's what you need to know.

Traditional sportsbooks — DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM — generally cannot offer election betting in the US. State gaming commissions haven't licensed it, and no major legal sportsbook has rolled out election markets domestically. Prediction markets are different. They operate as exchanges regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), not state gaming boards. The legal framework treats event contracts as derivatives, not wagers.

In 2023, Kalshi sued the CFTC for the right to list election contracts. The CFTC had blocked them, arguing that election betting violated the Commodity Exchange Act's prohibition on gaming. A federal court ruled in Kalshi's favor in September 2024, and the CFTC ultimately did not block the contracts from trading. Kalshi listed election markets for the 2024 presidential race. People traded them. The republic survived.

An election contract is a yes/no question: Will Candidate X win State Y? Will Party Z control the Senate? You buy a contract at a price between $0 and $1. If the outcome happens, the contract pays $1. If it doesn't, you get nothing. The current price reflects the market's aggregate probability estimate. A contract trading at $0.60 means the crowd thinks there's roughly a 60% chance of that outcome.

Kalshi is available in most US states, but not all. Some states have additional restrictions on event contracts. Availability can change as state regulators weigh in. The platform checks your location when you sign up and restricts access accordingly. If you're in a restricted state, you're out of luck — no VPN workarounds, no exceptions.

Platforms like Polymarket (which is crypto-based and officially not available to US users) and PredictIt (which operated under a limited CFTC no-action letter that expired) have also offered election markets at various times. The legal status of using offshore or crypto-based prediction markets as a US resident is murky at best. Dollar Bets links to regulated platforms.

If you're in an eligible state and want to put $1 on a political outcome, you can do that on Kalshi right now. The contracts are real, the payouts are real, and the legal framework — while still evolving — has been validated by a federal court. It's not the Wild West anymore. It's more like the Regulated Midwest.