Welcome to Thursday’s edition of Washington Secrets, where we are still running through the fallout from election night. Today we look at prediction market claims that the people are now effectively in charge of calling races, usurping a small elite who jealously guarded that power. Plus we speak to a Kalshi trader who made hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we have an exclusive on Rep. Byron Donalds’s first speech as Florida governor-elect.
The New York Times email landed at 8:07 p.m. Tuesday, announcing to readers that its election forecast needle was live.
The result was disbelief followed by merriment in the Kalshi war room in New York, where the prediction market had pretty much already declared the election done and Democrats to be the winners.
“We had the House at 99% and the Senate at 98% already,” Kalshi’s Jack Such told Secrets, “which was a cool moment.”
It was the first of a string of wins for the prediction markets over the more traditional umpires of election night.
Market favorites won 479 of the first 487 races. That’s a 98% hit rate.
And Kalshi announced Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico as the projected winner in Texas at 9:34 p.m. Eastern. That was just 34 minutes after polls closed and almost an hour and a half before the Associated Press made its call.
Tarek Mansour, Kalshi’s chief executive, took a lap of honor with a post on X, celebrating how the traditional gatekeepers had been vanquished.
“Last night, the power to decide what America sees changed hands,” he posted.
A Kalshi chart is displayed on a Fox News election broadcast during an election night event with Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general and Republican US Senate candidate, not pictured, in Dallas, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. Millions of Americans are casting ballots for the US midterm elections in races that will determine local issues as well as control of Congress, with all 435 seats of the House of Representatives and roughly a third in the Senate being contested. Photographer: Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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A Kalshi chart is displayed on a Fox News election broadcast during an election night event with Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general and Republican US Senate candidate, not pictured, in Dallas, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. Photographer: Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In so doing, Mansour laid down a very clear challenge to the pollsters and pundits who have had a monopoly on information up until now.
Such said the key to forecasting race winners ahead of the opposition simply came down to markets resolving when prices on one side or the other of the race spiked to 99 cents.
“When activity on the other side of the order book starts drying up, then you know that’s a very statistically confident forecast, and we’re comfortable making a sort of, you know, official projection,” he said.
An adviser to Kalshi told Secrets months ago that the prediction market wanted to partner up with a TV network to replace the AP in calling election races.
Such dismissed that idea. Calling races was best left to election officials and to the AP, he said.
“But we do think it’s important to get these things [forecasts] out because they do happen routinely hours and hours in advance of any other source,” he said.
The power lay in investors putting their own money on the line, fueling competition among them.
“It’s the competition of the market that sort of is what drives Kalshi to be able to end up calling these races,” he said, before realizing his slip. “Not calling… projecting these races far in advance.”
For Mansour, it is the next step in the rise of people power, usurping an elite gatekeeper class in understanding the national political picture.
“For generations, election night meant turning on the TV and waiting for a handful of people to tell you what happened,” he said. “Prediction markets change that.”
His words irritated at least one of the nation’s best-known election forecasters.
“Give me a break, the polls and models provided the direction in contrast to vibes and dumb insiders,” posted Nate Silver, whose FLIPR model’s final projection was an almost certain Democratic House takeover and an 80 percent chance of a Senate win.
“And yes, it’s good that traders were smart enough to trust them,” Silver added. “But the better election models were more confident about the outcome than the markets and got there more quickly.”
He bet $1.5 million and won big
David Bensoussan wagered more than $1.5 million on midterm election races and won big, collecting more than $350,000 on prediction markets.
He is one of a new breed of political prognosticator who uses Kalshi and Polymarket to put their money where their mouth is.
David Bensoussan, who won big on election night thanks to Kalshi (Washington Examiner / Rob Crilly)
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David Bensoussan, who won big on election night thanks to Kalshi (Washington Examiner / Rob Crilly)
Where some are “quants” who use statistics and computer programming to build data-driven models for trading, Bensoussan, known online as Scottilicious, uses vibes, newspapers and sometimes even his own informal door-to-door polling to make predictions.
The 49-year-old spoke to Secrets by phone from Chicago, where he was attending a futures markets conference.
This cycle, Bensoussan said he was struck by how the likes of Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, et al, had moved away from Trump.
“I don’t take them as the truth, so to speak … but these are people who people listen to, and it sort of formed a backdrop for me with the idea that lot of Republicans would stay home because of the Iran war, because of the prices, but also because their favorite media personality may have been way more critical of Trump than they were in the past,” he said.
The result was that he invested money on everything from predicting that Republicans would lose the House and Senate (to the tune of $119,000) and $113,000 that Democrat Mary Peltola would win the Senate race in Alaska (that one is still in the balance).
Bensoussan got in early-ish on Talarico when forecasters had the race as a toss-up.
There, he said candidate quality (Talarico was up against Ken Paxton, whose reign as attorney general was mired in sleaze allegations) and the experience of Democrat Beto O’Rourke in 2018 (when he ran Sen. Ted Cruz close) counted for a lot.
“It’s kind of an art of interpretation of the backdrop, along with the war in Iran and the higher prices, and lots of polling showing Talarico significantly ahead,” he said. “So all those variables made it… to me… quite different from the Beto versus Cruz race and gave me more confidence.”
The wins take his winnings to all-time highs. Bensoussan estimates he has collected about $2 million over the past two years, a tidy addition to the income from his day job, which involves managing a real estate portfolio.
It makes up for a shaky summer. He lost money when Francesca Hong failed to win the Democratic nomination for governor in Wisconsin, and more when Lula Da Silva failed to win the Brazilian presidency in the first round.
It made for a nerve-wracking ride this week.
“Oddly enough, yesterday [Election Day] I was I was kind of at peace with it and stoic … somewhat stoic,” he said on Wednesday. “But the day before, I was a wreck.”
Byron Donalds to speak at CPAC’s Mar-a-Lago gala
Rep. Byron Donalds‘ win in the Florida gubernatorial race was one of the only bright spots for Republicans on Tuesday night.
He will make his first speech as governor-elect on Thursday afternoon at Mar-a-Lago, where the Conservative Political Action Conference is holding its retreat and gala.
“The biggest win election night was keeping Florida free with the election of Byron as governor,” Matt Schlapp, CPAC head, told Secrets. “He earns a near-perfect CPAC congressional score, and he will lead our comeback from the Sunshine State.”
His win is the next step for Donalds from a state House member to U.S. representative and now Florida’s first black governor. It also positions him as a key player and powerbroker as the Republican Party decides what comes after Trump.
Lunchtime reading
Democrats already recruiting oversight staff as left-leaning law firms gear up for Trump investigations: Our Kaelan Deese reports that a House judiciary committee recruitment application page launched Wednesday.
What the US midterms mean for Britain: Don’t expect much to change, writes Ed Roman, who has just finished his term as spokesman for the British embassy in Washington. Good advice for the rest of the world too.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
