Several election betting operations which were active in November 2024 have been at it again
In Wisconsin, it is election fraud, and a felony, for people to vote in the same election that they’ve placed a bet on. Other posts explain more about this: https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/election-betting
Statistics have been made available for several election betting operations which have been taking bets on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. One of them, https://kalshi.com/markets/kxwiscotus/wi-state-supreme-court, states that $1,145,346 in bets have been placed at the time of writing this post, and the other, https://polymarket.com/event/wisconsin-supreme-court-election-susan-crawford-vs-brad-schimel, shows $1,439,550 in bets.
Officially, Polymarket will not accept bets from American citizens, although some circumvent its restrictions without much trouble, but Kalshi is both based in the US and takes bets from American citizens. Although the dollar figures represent hundreds of thousands of individual betting contracts, the actual number of bettors is probably much smaller than that.
A third election betting operation, Interactive Brokers, is staying out of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race: https://forecasttrader.interactivebrokers.com/eventtrader/#/markets
Yet its website lists six other election betting options for Wisconsin races.
Exactly how many of the bettors are also Wisconsin voters is anyone’s guess, but an idea as to the minimum total number of bettors can be obtained from the Kalshi website. The commenters have either a default “WI” symbol or their own unique image, but the default symbol was chosen by the betting operation for everyone on the page. It does not mean they are necessarily from Wisconsin.
These are some of the comments:
Altogether, excluding replies there are 35 unique commenters, as of the time of writing. If an estimated 1% of the bettors bothered to make a comment, that would mean about 3,500 total bettors, with an average bet of $327.24, together totaling $1,145,346 in bets.
If the margin of victory is greater than 3,500 votes, the total number of electors casting votes despite being disqualified due to election betting is unlikely to affect the outcome of the race, or a subsequent challenge to the results.
That is only a very rough estimation. Polymarket may also have some Wisconsin voters among its users, but it would be harder for a prosecutor to obtain a list of names and addresses from it.
Interactive Brokers is a much larger business than Kalshi, and is also located in the United States. That is staying out of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race should help limit the total number of disqualified electors who cast votes during the April 1, 2025 election.
[Addition after the polls have closed:
Both betting operations have reported additional activity since this post was written. Kalshi reports a total volume of $3,559,259 and Polymarket reports a total volume of $3,905,543. Many more people joined in the discussion, either with new comments, or with replies. The flurry of betting activity on election day undercuts the accuracy of my estimate in the post about the number of disqualified electors who cast ballots.
However, the margins of victory should still be sufficiently high to prevent the problem of election bettors casting ballots from being used in court to justify overturning the election results for either the State Supreme Court or the State Superintendent races. The previous sentence mentions both races, because for every disqualified elector, the entire ballot itself is fraudulent, not merely the race which was the subject of a bet.
Although it remains a possibility that a close local race somewhere in the state could be affected, it is unlikely the losing local candidate will have the influence needed to mount a criminal investigation in order to determine how many (if any) disqualified ballots were cast locally, or the money needed to challenge the election results.]