Campaign Staffers Admit to Insider Trading on Unreleased Polls
An NPR investigation has found that campaign staffers are regularly betting on their own candidates using private polling data.
The prediction market industry has spent considerable energy arguing that its products are financial instruments, not gambling products, and that the information they aggregate produces genuine insight into likely outcomes. A new NPR investigation tests that claim from an uncomfortable angle: what happens when the people with the best information are also the ones placing the bets?
Campaign staffers tell NPR they have been making thousands of dollars betting on their own candidates using prediction markets, converting private polling data into personal paydays in a practice they describe as commonplace and largely unregulated.
One staffer working on a statewide race in the South described receiving a tip about an unreleased outside poll showing their candidate up by a significant margin. The internal numbers did not match, but that barely mattered. “Myself and others started placing bets before that poll came out,” the staffer said. “And then, sure enough, as soon as that poll came out, the stock went up, and everybody made money.”
NPR verified the trade using prediction market data. “The most I’ve ever made is thousands,” the staffer said. “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.”
What the Law Actually Says
The legal question is genuinely unsettled, which is a large part of why the practice has continued. Jeff Le Riche, who spent 20 years as a CFTC trial lawyer focused on insider trading and market manipulation, told NPR that campaign staffer election betting could potentially check every box needed for a CFTC investigation. “It’s illegal or a violation of the Commodity Exchange Act if you have material, non-public information and you have a duty not to use that,” Le Riche said. “There’s probably a pretty good argument that they’re using information that they’re not supposed to use for their benefit.”
The key documents in any such investigation would be the staffer’s employment agreement and the prediction market’s user agreement. If either contains a confidentiality obligation that the staffer breached, the legal framework for prosecution exists. Whether the CFTC chooses to use it is a different question.
Former CFTC Commissioner Kristin Johnson was direct about the agency’s readiness. “I don’t believe that the CFTC has developed experience and expertise in policing election positions,” she said, adding that the commission has not tried a series of cases testing its authority in this context and questioning its staffing levels and ability to execute on its mandate. “This happens a lot in financial innovation, where something goes from a purely unregulated space, kind of a Wild West approach, you haven’t seen many people get in trouble or prosecuted or investigated for activity, and so it creates an illusion of safety.”
The Legislative Response
The NPR investigation lands in an environment where Congress is already paying attention, though not necessarily to campaign staffers specifically. Representative Ritchie Torres introduced the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 in January, prompted by the highly profitable Polymarket bets placed just before the Trump administration’s operation against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The bill would prohibit federal elected officials, political appointees, and executive branch employees from trading prediction market contracts tied to government policy or political outcomes when they possess material non-public information obtained through their official duties.
The Senate voted unanimously to prohibit senators and their staff from trading on prediction markets. Senator Todd Young called the rule change a “good first step” and said Congress should go further, prohibiting all federally elected officials and government employees from using insider information to bet on prediction market contracts. Neither the Senate rule change nor the proposed legislation covers campaign staffers.
That gap is significant. The people with the most operationally relevant information about a campaign’s internal polling, its voter contact data, and its candidate’s plans are not federal officials. They are private employees working for political organizations. Torres’ bill would not touch them. The Senate’s ethics rule would not touch them. And the CFTC’s existing authority, while theoretically applicable, has never been tested in this context.
Why This Matters Beyond the Headlines
The prediction market industry’s foundational claim is that prices reflect aggregated information from many financially motivated participants who are incentivized to be right. That argument depends on a roughly level playing field in which no single participant has a systematic informational advantage over the others.
A campaign staffer betting on an unreleased poll is not a participant with better analytical judgment. They are participants with access to private information that the rest of the market does not have. When they profit, they do so at the expense of every other trader who priced the contract based on public information. The market is not discovering the truth in that transaction. It is being exploited by an insider.
In recent weeks, Kalshi has fined and banned several political candidates for betting on themselves. The platform banned a candidate in the California governor’s race who publicly told supporters he had bet on himself to win and encouraged them to do the same, and suspended three users after an internal probe found candidates had bet on their own campaigns. Those cases were visible because the subjects made them visible. Campaign staffers speaking anonymously to NPR represent the invisible version of the same problem.
The industry’s response to individual cases has been to treat them as exceptions, investigate them after the fact, and point to its terms of service as the relevant prohibition. That approach is nothing. But the NPR investigation suggests the behavior is not exceptional. A second staffer who worked on statewide races on the East Coast said they saw colleagues betting on races they were involved in and described it as common. “They were placing bets because they had polling, and the markets were so topsy turvy,” the staffer said. “They were like, ‘I’m going to go make a quick $5,000.'”
What a Regulator Who Is Genuinely Prepared Would Do
The CFTC is not that regulator yet. Johnson’s assessment is that the agency lacks both the expertise and the case law to pursue election-related insider trading systematically. At a House Agriculture Committee hearing in April, CFTC Chair Michael Selig said “nothing is more important than protecting market integrity” while simultaneously serving as the industry’s primary defender against state enforcement actions. Those two postures are not necessarily contradictory, but the gap between the rhetoric and the enforcement record is wide enough to drive a campaign bus through.
The prediction market industry is lobbying hard for federal regulatory clarity on jurisdiction, on preemption, and on licensing. It would benefit from lobbying equally hard for federal regulatory clarity on insider trading. If its products are financial instruments, they deserve enforcement at the financial instrument level. Right now, they have the regulatory benefits of that classification without the obligations.
The second campaign staffer predicted the situation would persist. “Unless the federal government makes a change, it’s kind of going to continue to be the Wild West, in all honesty,” they said. That observation functions as both a description and a warning, depending on how seriously the industry chooses to take it.
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
