Political insiders have found a new way to make cash off of election season.
Betting on the success or failure of political candidates has effectively become commonplace in the industry, NPR reported Thursday, with campaign staffers making thousands of dollars off of their respective candidates.
One staffer working on a statewide campaign in the south told NPR how an external poll, shared prior to its release with their team, launched a wave of internal bets in support of their candidate. Internal campaign data showed their candidate faring worse than the external poll, but that didn’t matter.
“Myself and others started placing bets before that poll came out,” the staffer told NPR on the condition of anonymity. “And then, sure enough as soon as that poll came out, the stock went up and everybody made money.”
There’s apparently no shame in the game, despite recent attempts by online prediction markets to curb the behavior. In late April, the prediction market Kalshi—better known for sports betting—banned and fined several political candidates after a company probe found they had bet on themselves.
“Because you have all this information and knowledge that isn’t publicly available yet, it’s almost foolish not to bet on it before it’s made public,” the staffer said.
The practice has raised questions about the ethics and legality of campaign betting, and what has become known as “political insider trading.”
The process is as easy as can be imagined: an insider will become privy to nonpublic polls related to the campaign, and use the unreleased odds from the poll to inform their bets on sites like PredictIt or Polymarket. If the new poll indicates better odds of success than the odds on the website, they’ll buy low with what’s known as an event contract—knowing that the poll, once released, will raise their candidate’s favorability.
“The most I’ve ever made is thousands,” the staffer told NPR.