The LA Mayoral Market on Kalshi Has Already Cleared $40 Million Before Polls Close
Kalshi’s market on the LA mayoral race surpassed $40 million before the polls closed. It’s the platform’s largest local political market ever.
The Kalshi market on the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral race crossed $40 million in total volume on Tuesday morning, hours before polls close in California. The race is a non-partisan primary featuring incumbent Karen Bass, City Councilmember Nithya Raman, former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, and several lesser-known candidates. If no candidate clears 50 percent, the top two finishers advance to a November runoff. Kalshi traders have made Bass the heavy favorite to advance at 96 percent, with Pratt second at 79 percent and Raman trailing at lower levels despite a late surge.
The $40 million figure is the volume on the winning market alone. Separate Kalshi markets on which candidates will advance, the first-round vote totals, the Trump endorsement, and the various hypothetical runoff matchups add additional volume that is not reflected in that headline number. The combined Kalshi exposure to the LA mayoral race is meaningfully higher than $40 million, and the day’s trading is still in its early hours as of this morning’s data.
Election Day Trading Could Push Market Toward $100 Million
The market’s growth has been almost entirely a function of the final weeks before the primary. Three weeks ago, we reported approximately $9.8 million in total volume on the winner market, with $9.1 million of that occurring since March 1. By late May, the winner market volume was reportedly “beyond $25 million and climbing” as the Berkeley-LA Times poll showed Bass, Raman, and Pratt in a statistical dead heat. The market crossed $40 million sometime overnight or in the early morning hours of June 2, with day-of trading still in its early stages. Pratt accounts for three-quarters of that.
Trading on Polymarket’s international site has been lighter but still significant, at $5 million total and $3 million on Pratt.
That growth curve, roughly $30 million in the final 18 days before the primary, is the kind of acceleration Kalshi has seen on national-scale political events in previous cycles. It is highly unusual for a municipal race.
The second-biggest political market of the year so far was the Kentucky Senate District 4 Republican primary. It saw $25 million in total trading, but $18 million of that came in on election day. Kalshi users predominantly use the platform like a sportsbook and tend to treat other markets the same way. If the bulk of LA mayorship trading takes place while locals watch the televised results come in, the same ratio suggests the final total could be as high as $140 million. However, the final runoff won’t be until November, and could be overshadowed by the general election.
For comparison, the 2024 presidential race saw only $110 million in election-day trading on Kalshi, which goes to show how much the platform has grown in two years.
Historically, mayoral elections generate negligible prediction market activity. Even races in major media markets typically clear five to seven figures in total volume rather than eight. The LA market has done something different, and the reasons are worth understanding.
The Spencer Pratt Media Tour Factor
The single biggest driver of volume in this market is Spencer Pratt and the media coverage he has garnered over the past few weeks. The former Hills star, who lost his home in the 2025 Palisades fire and has built his campaign around populist messaging about homelessness and city mismanagement, has become a magnet for Kalshi trading specifically. Gaming America’s earlier reporting found that, of the $9.1 million in trading since March 1, roughly $7.2 million was on Pratt specifically. That accounted for 79 percent of trading on the mayoral race, despite Pratt running second or third in the betting odds throughout the campaign.
The pattern matters because it tells you something specific about Kalshi’s user base in this market. The traders interested enough to put significant money on a Los Angeles mayoral race are not, by and large, betting on the boring favorite. They are betting on the underdog Republican reality TV star with Trump’s quiet endorsement and a $2.72 million fundraising haul that significantly outpaced the incumbent’s. The market exists, in functional terms, mostly because Pratt exists in this race.
That is also the dynamic that makes the volume figure interesting as a benchmark. A $40 million market on a non-partisan mayoral race with a 26-25-22 percent dead heat at the top is not what political prediction markets typically look like. A $40 million market driven largely by traders backing a single celebrity candidate against the establishment is closer to the shape of the 2024 presidential markets than the shape of a typical local race.
How It Compares to Other Kalshi Political Markets
The most useful benchmark is the 2024 presidential race, which saw approximately $110 million in day-of trading on Kalshi alone. The LA mayoral market is unlikely to reach that level, both because the user base is smaller and because the velocity of trading on the morning of June 2 suggests a slower-burn day than the presidential election day saw, which was massive. The early morning data showed growth of roughly $260,000 per hour between 7:30 AM and 10:30 AM Pacific. Even with significant acceleration as Eastern markets close and West Coast attention focuses on the race, the day’s likely total falls well short of the presidential benchmark.
Comparing this to the presidential race provides some context, but more local race comparisons give a broader context of how big this is. Statewide gubernatorial races in 2025 typically cleared eight figures in total volume across their cycles, with day-of figures in the low tens of millions. Several 2024 Senate races saw total cycle volumes between $15 million and $35 million. By those comparisons, the LA mayoral market has already cleared the typical Senate-race threshold and is on pace to substantially exceed it before polls close tonight.
For a mayoral race, that is a result with no historical analog on the platform. Kalshi has not had a sub-presidential US political event approach this level of volume before. The race is, by a meaningful margin, the largest local political market in the company’s history.
What This Means for Kalshi’s Political Strategy
The volume matters to Kalshi for reasons beyond the trading fees it generates. The company has spent the past year arguing that political prediction markets serve a legitimate informational function and should be protected from state-level enforcement under the CFTC’s federal jurisdiction. That argument has been the basis of Kalshi’s lawsuits against multiple state attorneys general, the CFTC’s recent suits defending the company’s jurisdiction in Minnesota and elsewhere, and the broader political case the prediction markets industry has been making to Congress.
A $40-plus million market on a single municipal election demonstrates that demand for political prediction trading exists well below the presidential level. The Senate hearings, the state lawsuits, and the AGA’s recent $1 billion tracker have all framed prediction markets as a niche product that primarily competes with sportsbooks for sports betting volume. The LA mayoral market is a counterexample. It is a political event, not a sports event, and the volume it has generated is substantial by any measure relevant to the industry’s argument.
Whether Pratt advances tonight will affect the November runoff market, the markets on the various hypothetical matchups, and the broader trajectory of Kalshi’s political coverage going forward. The volume figure itself, however, is already a milestone. By the time polls close at 8 PM Pacific, the LA mayoral market will likely have cleared $50 million on the winner market alone, with substantially more across the related contracts. Six months ago, that result would have seemed implausible. Tonight it is happening in real time.
Players trust our reporting due to our commitment to unbiased and professional evaluations of the iGaming sector. We track hundreds of platforms and industry updates daily to ensure our news feed and leaderboards reflect the most recent market shifts. With nearly two decades of experience within iGaming, our team provides a wealth of expert knowledge. This long-standing expertise enables us to deliver thorough, reliable news and guidance to our readers.
Latest News
