Americans can now turn their predictions about who will control Congress into a bet — but most don’t think they should. With the November 3 midterms approaching, 60% of US adults oppose using prediction markets to wager on election results, while just 13% support it and 24% are unsure, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. They will see the odds anyway: television networks are adding prediction-market prices to their coverage this fall.
CBS News said September 30 it would add real-time prices from Kalshi to its midterm coverage, alongside its own polling. Kalshi has similar arrangements with CNN and CNBC, and licenses vote counts and race calls from the Associated Press. CBS and CNN now share an owner: Skydance, which completed its purchase of CNN’s parent, Warner Bros. Discovery, on October 6. The opposition crosses party lines — 69% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans oppose election betting — and extends beyond elections: 65% oppose wagering on US military actions and 63% on government policy announcements.
Gambling by another name?
Three-quarters of Americans consider prediction-market wagering a form of gambling, and only 7% said they had used a prediction market to bet money. “Most view prediction markets as a form of gambling, and it’s clear that they do not see elections or government decision-making as appropriate subjects for it,” Alec Tyson, a senior vice president and lead pollster at Ipsos US Public Affairs, told Fortune.
Skeptics also question what the prices actually measure. On Polymarket’s global platform, the top 1% of wallets account for 68% of trading volume on 2026 congressional markets, and 80% of those markets have fewer than 100 wallets trading, according to an August analysis by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective — a thin base on which to rest claims of forecasting superiority. The companies say their markets often outperform traditional polls and offer ways to hedge esoteric risks; critics in Congress call them unethical, socially corrosive and a national-security risk.
A test for election coverage
The poll, conducted September 30 through October 5 among 4,506 adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 points, suggests the booming industry may lack broad public support just as policymakers debate how to regulate it. Whether flashing odds on screen informs voters or merely normalizes wagering on democracy itself is the question networks will have to answer this fall.
The midterms are already reshaping the political landscape, from the White House’s foreign-policy gambles to the economic anxieties driving voters. As the odds come to TV, most Americans would rather they stayed off. Read the Reuters exclusive via Reuters and Fortune’s analysis.
