Kalshi, a prediction market where people buy and sell contracts tied to real events, runs a board on the 2026 Iowa Senate race. Each contract is attached to one named person and pays out only if that person wins. Prices run from 1 cent to 99 cents, and a price of 34 cents means the market prices that outcome at about a 34% chance.
As of Sunday, September 6, 2026, 10:55 PM ET, that board prices Republican Ashley Hinson at 66 cents, Democrat Josh Turek at 34 cents, and Democrat Zach Wahls at 1 cent. Turek's price has moved. His daily closes ran 40% on Saturday, August 29, then 38% on Monday, September 1, then 41% on Wednesday, September 2 and again on Thursday, September 3. On Friday, September 4 he closed at 34%, and he closed at 34% again on Saturday, September 5. Hinson went the other way over the same two days, from 62% to 66% to 67%.
Turek is a member of the Iowa House of Representatives from the 20th district and a wheelchair basketball player, per Wikipedia. Thirty-four cents is a minority case, not a long shot. Here is what that minority case is built on.
What Turek's 34 Cents Is Resting On
The list below is ranked by how much of that 34 cents each item carries. The first entries are the load-bearing ones, the pieces that have to hold for the price to stay where it is. The later entries are the weight on the other side, the history and the market pricing that explain why the number is 34 and not 50.
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Josh Turek. In the November 5, 2024 election he won Iowa House District 20 over Republican James Wassell 5,881 votes to 5,320, about 52.5% to 47.5%, according to certified results. In the same precincts on the same day, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris 6,226 to 5,270, which means Turek ran more than 13 points ahead of the top of his own ticket, as Bleeding Heartland reported on June 2, 2026. That gap between how he polls and how his party polls is the single fact the whole 34 cents is built on.
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Ashley Hinson. She has led every day of the last week on the board, from 61% on August 29 to 67% on September 5, and she led Turek 50% to 45% in the most recent public survey. Turek does not need to find new voters so much as he needs Hinson to finish under 50%, because a candidate at or above 50 does not lose to undecideds breaking late. Her price has not dropped below 61% in the seven days of closes available here.
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The five points Emerson could not allocate. The Emerson College Polling and Nexstar Media survey released September 3, 2026 had Hinson at 50% and Turek at 45%, which leaves five points somewhere else. The poll was conducted August 31 to September 1 with 750 likely voters, meaning people the pollster screened as likely to actually vote, and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 points, which is the range within which the true number is expected to sit. Turek's path requires nearly all of that remaining five to come to him and none of it to go to Hinson.
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Rob Sand. Emerson College Polling executive director Spencer Kimball said, "About six percent of voters in the Iowa poll are splitting their ticket to support both Republican Ashley Hinson for Senate and Democrat Rob Sand for Governor." Ticket splitting means voting for one party in one race and the other party in another race on the same ballot. Those voters are already willing to cross the line once, and Turek's case is that some share of them can be moved to cross it twice.
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Zach Wahls. Wahls is a Democratic member of the Iowa Senate, per Wikipedia, and Turek beat him in the June 2, 2026 Democratic primary with 62.6% of the vote, according to Ballotpedia. A 62.6% primary win is a clean one, which removes the split-party problem that can follow a narrow nomination fight. Wahls still carries a 1 cent contract on the board, which is the price of an outcome the market treats as close to closed.
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The September 4 repricing. Turek closed at 41% on September 3 and 34% on September 4, a seven point move in one day, and he has not recovered any of it since. The Emerson poll was released on September 3, the day before, and it showed Hinson up two points from August while Turek was unchanged, widening her lead from three points to five. No public event dated September 4 explains the move on its own, and Kalshi does not publish a reason for a price change, so the cause is not public.
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Tom Harkin. Harkin, a Democrat, won reelection to the U.S. Senate from Iowa on November 4, 2008 with 62.66% of the vote to Republican Christopher Reed's 37.26%, a margin of about 25.4 points. No Democrat has won an Iowa U.S. Senate race since. That is the drought, and it is 18 years long going into this election.
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Joni Ernst. Republican Joni Ernst won an open Iowa Senate seat on November 4, 2014, beating Democrat Bruce Braley 52.10% to 43.76%, a margin of about 8.3 points. That is the closest an Iowa Democrat has come in the drought years, and it is still more than eight points. Turek's task is to beat the best recent Democratic result by more than the result itself was short.
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Chuck Grassley. Republican incumbent Chuck Grassley won reelection on November 8, 2016, beating Democrat Patty Judge 60.09% to 35.66%, a margin of about 24.4 points. That is what the bad version of an Iowa Senate race looks like for a Democrat, and it happened two cycles ago. The gap between 8.3 points and 24.4 points is the range Turek is working inside.
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Kalshi's Iowa margin board. A separate Kalshi market on the margin of victory prices Republicans winning by 2 or more points at 53%, by 4 or more at 37%, and by 14 or more at 25%. Those prices sit closer to the Ernst result than the Grassley one. A separate board on the 2028 Iowa Senate race prices the Republican party at 62% and the Democratic party at 38%, close to where the 2026 board sits now.
What To Watch
The next dated item that could move the number is another poll. Emerson College Polling has now released at least two Iowa surveys in this race, an August one and the September 3 release that measured Hinson up two points from that August read, so a monthly cadence would put the next one in early October. If that poll puts Hinson under 50% or moves Turek off 45%, the 34 cent price has a reason to move that the September 4 drop did not visibly have. The other dated item is the election itself, on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, which is when these contracts settle by their own rule: if the named person wins the 2026 Iowa Senate election, the contract resolves to Yes. One note on that rule. The board lists a market close date of 2027-11-03, which does not match a 2026 election, and that field has not been confirmed with Kalshi, so treat the listed close date as unresolved rather than as the settlement date.
