Prediction markets are eating politics

No one used to argue about the phrase “insider trading.” For decades, those two words connoted a transgression, a crime, something unambiguously tainted. But lately, with the meteoric rise of prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi, leveraging niche information for personal, financial, and even political gain has become, well, commonplace. As the 2026 midterm elections approach, these markets are turning elections into yet another exchange, a place for insiders and analysts to strike it rich—but also for candidates and their advisers to assess their civic standing in real time. As Americans get set to vote once again, campaign staffers, operatives, strategists, and others who work in politics are frequently monitoring betting-market odds. Some have begun treating the data as seriously as they do traditional polling. Yet with money to be made on candidates’ performance and decisions, obvious ethical issues have emerged. Those who hold inside information about even the most specific and narrow of happenings could be incentivized to act for financial gain instead of democratic ideals. And the warning signs have been there for years. One of the more well-known progressive str…