Kalshi expands election betting options, CFTC complains

KalshiEx has listed more than two dozen new options in recent days for the exchange’s customers to bet on political outcomes, including the presidential race, the popular vote and Electoral College margins of that race, and individual Senate contests.

The new contracts were added to Kalshi’s platform within days of a favorable federal appeals court ruling for the company on Oct 2. The ruling lifted a temporary injunction that had blocked Kalshi from offering contracts on which political parties would control each chamber of Congress after the November elections.

A day later, Kalshi offered a contract for customers to bet on the winner of the presidential election, and potentially hedging any losses a customer might incur.

As of Wednesday, more than $3 million had been wagered in political contracts on Kalshi’s site, the lion’s share of which was on contracts of whether Vice President Kamala Harris or Donald Trump would win the presidential election.

Kalshi wagers on the presidential race outcomes were split 50-50, roughly reflecting national polling on the contest.

Other contracts available for betting Wednesday included the outcomes of individual Senate races, which state would be the tipping point in the presidential election, which presidential candidates would win individual swing states, and the margin of victory in the race for the White House.

“It’s been great, there’s been a tremendous demand, ” Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said in an interview, about the response to the exchange’s new political contract options.

Adding those options “was always the plan,” said Mansour, as the company fought a ban on these types of contracts enacted by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

For Mansour, the betting contracts for political outcomes represent a way for investors to hedge against the broader financial impacts of one political outcome over another — not a means to influence the elections themselves.

“Each of these markets capture different risks,” he said. A president imposing tariffs, for example, could affect a customer’s financial situation.

He said Kalshi’s political outcome contracts are a more direct way to hedge such risks than the “bundles” of trades that investment banks offer, designed to give customers a hedge against the election of a certain presidential candidate.

“We have a healthy mix of both” customers looking to hedge financial risks and speculators, he said.

“Everything Kalshi is doing is within the law and regulated,” Mansour said, noting that the exchange has to keep records about its customers that are available to the federal government.

“We believe the law is on our side.”

The CFTC disagrees.

Kalshi has “gone full throttle on election betting,” the CFTC complained in a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Even more political races could soon become available for…