I underestimated the Blue Wave on Election Day, and I’m paying for it. But not much, and I don’t mind at all.
On October 29, I placed five $10 bets on the election outcomes on prediction site Kalshi. I make prediction-market bets from time to time as a way of putting a fun spin on stories and learning about this new form of betting. Like most people, I expected Democrats to make solid gains in the midterms. But I’ve reported on a lot of elections and been misled many times by the infamous polls that overstate Democratic prospects. Not this time, I vowed.
In particular, I didn’t think Democrats would take control of the Senate. Call it Beto Syndrome. In 2018, Democrat Beto O’Rourke ran an impressive campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, daring people to think a charismatic upstart could beat a Trump-backed hardline conservative. Cruz won by 3 points and Betomania evaporated. Since then, there has seemed to be some kind of force field permanently repelling Democrats from a sizable number of perma-red seats and states.
[What Democrats need now: A convincing leader]
That red wall crumbled on November 3. Democrats got almost everything they could have wished for in the midterms, including sizable majorities in both the House and Senate. I lost three bets and won two, putting me slightly in the red overall. Here’s how my bets turned out, with charts showing the odds at the time I made each bet:
LOSING BETS
Losing Bet 1. Democrats will end up with between 238 and 241 House seats. Odds: 13%. Payout on $10: Up to $72.46. This was a pretty mainstream bet, right in the middle of polling predictions. I was off by at least 20 seats, which is a huge miss. Dems will probably end up with more than 260 House seats, which would be the most they’ve held since 1990.
Losing Bet 2. Democrats will end up with 50 Senate seats next year. Odds: 12%. Payout on $10: Up to $78.46. I guessed Republicans would win as usual in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas, with Dems picking up just three seats overall. That would have given Dems a total of 50 seats, with Republicans keeping de facto control, given Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote. But Dems won all six of those states. They may also win Alaska and, most astonishing of all, Mississippi, for a majority of 55 to 57 seats. Never. Saw. That. Coming.