Every Politician With a Prediction Market on Them Right Now

Right now there are three named politicians with live prediction markets on Kalshi and Polymarket. Not three categories. Not three races. Three specific human beings whose individual political futures are being priced as a financial contract this week. Below is the roster.

This is a snapshot, not a permanent record. The roster turns over as primaries resolve and new ones list, so the names here are the names that happened to be live the morning this page was built. The numbers next to each politician are what a single dollar returns if their market resolves yes — pulled from the live board, not invented.

Kalshi market: whether Chi Charlie Nguyen leads the California 45th congressional district primary. Resolves November 2027. A dollar returns $10 — heater tier, orange — because the crowd thinks his odds of leading are about 10%. The total volume the market has traded is roughly $160, which means a handful of people have effectively decided his price between themselves. The CA-45 covers parts of Orange County; it has been one of California's more contested swing districts. The fact that a primary that resolves a year and a half from now is already a tradable contract is, frankly, the entire pitch for prediction markets in one screenshot.

Kalshi market: whether George Whitesides leads the California 27th congressional district primary. A dollar returns $2.17 — respectable tier, green — putting his implied odds in the high forties. Whitesides is the freshman incumbent: he won the seat in 2024 after running Virgin Galactic as its CEO and serving as NASA's chief of staff before that. The market is asking, essentially, whether a former commercial-spaceflight executive can hold his own party's primary in a competitive Antelope Valley / Santa Clarita district. The crowd thinks he probably can. The crowd is also charging you a respectable price to find out.

Polymarket market: whether Francesca Hong wins the Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor. A dollar returns $3.37 — yellow tier, alive — because the crowd has her around 30%. Hong is a Madison restaurateur and sitting state assembly member who declared for governor as the kind of insurgent candidacy that doesn't usually show up in a market until much closer to the primary. The market exists in part because Wisconsin's a perennial swing state and in part because Polymarket users will list a contract on almost anything if there's a resolution date and a name.

Plenty of other political markets are live this week — Kalshi's market on whether the US seals a new Iran nuclear deal before June has done over $1.5 million in volume, and there are running contracts on Fed rate decisions, federal budget deadlines, and inflation prints. None of those have a single politician's name on them. They're policy markets, not person markets. This page is specifically the roster of named individuals — the smaller and stranger subset where the contract is about one human's career outcome.

Three names is a small list. It is also, this week, the complete list, and that's the editorial point. Cable news has a built-in incentive to cover the same six national politicians on a loop. Prediction markets price whoever someone is willing to bet on, which turns out to be a much weirder distribution. Right now that distribution is one freshman incumbent in southern California, one challenger in another southern California seat, and one state assembly member trying to skip three rungs to a Midwestern governor's mansion. None of them are running for president. All of them have a contract.

Short version: it's contested and varies by where you are. Election-related prediction markets in the US have been through repeated rounds of regulatory and court fights, particularly Kalshi's election contracts, and availability has shifted more than once. We keep a dedicated explainer on whether you can legally bet on elections — read that before opening an account if you're new to this corner of the market.

This roster is a slice of a wider politics aisle — the named-person slice. Our politics markets section pulls the broader set, including policy and event markets. The weirdest election prediction markets page covers the same three names plus the broader 'this is absurd' angle. And today's full board is rebuilt every morning, so if a fourth politician shows up tomorrow, they'll show up there first.