Prices as of August 26, 2026, 8:15 p.m. Eastern. Record compiled from 31 dated sources; see the sourced record file for every citation.
The people with money on the question have an answer, and it has not changed in a month. On Kalshi, where a price in cents is a probability, the contract that pays $1 if Democrats win control of the House on November 3, 2026 was quoted at 8:15 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday at 84 cents by buyers and 85 by sellers: about an 85% chance. The Republican contract was 15 to 16. The Democratic price has not left the 83-to-86 band since July 26. The reasons are on the record: a generic ballot that six polling averages put at Democrats plus 6.3 on August 20, a president whose approval Pew measured at 34% in July, and 110 special elections since January 2025 in which Democrats have run 12.5 points ahead of Kamala Harris's 2024 margins.
What has changed is where the trading is. In the 24 hours to 8:15 p.m., about 940,000 contracts changed hands on this board, and 884,467 of them, 94%, were on the 16-cent Republican side; almost all of that was buying. At 6:36:52 p.m., one order took 511,189 Republican contracts in a single second, 167 fills, sweeping every offer from 16 cents up to 30 before it ran out, about $89,800 spent. The next trade, one second later, printed at 16. By 6:44 p.m. the price was back where it started. We found no news at 6:36 p.m. to explain it.
That is the shape of the House question on August 26: a favorite whose price nobody is moving, and a long shot whose price everybody is trading. The market's answer to "who will win the House" is Democrats, at about six chances in seven. Its second answer is that a fair amount of money thinks six in seven is too many.
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The Board
As of August 26, 2026, 8:15 p.m. Eastern (Kalshi, cents = probability; the bid/ask is what buyers will pay and what sellers want):
| Outcome | Yes price (bid/ask) | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| Democratic Party | 84¢ / 85¢ | about 85% |
| Republican Party | 15¢ / 16¢ | about 16% |
Two rows is the whole board: one of the two parties will organize the House, so the two asks add to 101 cents and the bids to 99. Each contract pays $1 if that party "has won control of the House in 2026"; Kalshi may settle it early on a consensus of media calls, otherwise on the party of the Speaker on February 1, 2027, so the November 3 vote decides it. The month's movement: Democrats 83 to 84 through August 6, 85 from August 7, a first close at 86 on August 13, then 85 or 86 every day until tonight's 84 and 85; Republicans 17 in late July, 14 on August 13, 16 on August 21, 15 to 16 now. The week's tape is all on the cheap side: 2.63 million Republican contracts traded from August 19 to 26 against 270,676 Democratic, and buyers took 81% of it. The other big prints: 250,474 Republican contracts bought at 15 and 16 cents in one second at 2:07 p.m. on August 20, about $37,800, and 200,000 sold at 14 cents at 8:19 a.m. on August 21, a bet against a Republican House that risked about $172,000 to win about $28,000. About 26 million contracts have traded since the board opened, and 16.5 million positions are still open. Polymarket at 8:30 p.m. had Democrats 87.5. Kalshi's balance-of-power board at 8:15 p.m. priced a Democratic House with a Republican Senate at 38 to 39 cents and with a Democratic Senate at 46 to 47; add the two and you get 85, this board's number.
What the Models Think
We also put the question to our panel of forecasting programs, which we grade in public against real settlements, without showing them the price, only the sourced record below. Three of the panel's eight seats ran this board. Their middle answer put Democrats at 82%, three points under the 85-cent market, and the widest gap between any two of them was 17 points, from 70 to 87. All three weighed the same things: a generic ballot near plus 6, a president in the mid-30s on approval and the special-election record, set against a redrawn map they put at five to eight seats in Republicans' favor. One model: "Democrats need only net +3, so a D+4 or better national vote almost certainly clears the raised bar." The low seat, at 70, gave the most weight to the map and to the chance that August's polls do not hold until November; the high seat, at 87, called the retirements, 37 Republicans to 23 Democrats, "a classic pre-wave signal." Even the lowest of the three prices the Republican side at about 30 cents, the top of tonight's sweep, and the other two well under it. The market has real money behind it. The panel has only the record. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice.
The Polls, The Specials And The Retirements All Point The Same Way
Start with the number every forecaster starts with. Silver Bulletin's average on August 26 had "Democrats' margin is sitting at D +6.6," or plus 7.6 among likely voters. Decision Desk HQ's August 14 memo had 47 to 41. Morning Consult, the most cautious tracker, had plus 4, 46 to 42, as of August 17. Emerson on August 16 and 17 had the Democratic candidate 51 to 43 among 1,000 likely voters. Verasight's August 14 to 19 survey of 1,514 adults, published August 26, had 49 to 43 among registered voters and 51.1 to 43.6 among likely ones, with the president at 37% approve and 60% disapprove: "Every one of the 12 issues we test is now underwater, and not one of them improved this month."
The second number is the one the market trusts most, because it is made of votes. The Downballot's Daniel Donner counted 110 special elections since January 2025 on August 19 and found Democrats "overperformed Harris by 12.5 points on average," with 31 legislative flips, all Democratic; his conclusion: "we would expect a political environment similar to what we saw in 2018." The third number is the exits. Ballotpedia counted 60 House members not running again as of August 5, 23 Democrats and 37 Republicans; Quorum noted in April that the Republican figure was already "breaking the single-party record of 34 Republican retirements set in 2018, the cycle that preceded Democrats' 40-seat House wave."
The people who rate seats one at a time are slower than the people who trade them. Sabato's Crystal Ball moved 13 House races toward Democrats on July 31 and still had 208 seats leaning Republican, 207 Democratic and 20 toss-ups; Kyle Kondik's own expectation is a Democratic majority "in the low-to-mid 220-seat range," with Republicans keeping "a viable path to retaining control of the House." Since then the changes have run one way: Cook moved Florida's 14th and Michigan's 10th to Toss-up on August 25, and the Crystal Ball moved Texas's 15th, a seat Republicans drew in the Rio Grande Valley, to Toss-up on August 26. Nate Silver, per Newsweek on August 3, called a Republican hold "a fairly low-probability outcome." Kalshi's seat-count ladder tells the same story in seats rather than cents.
The Map Fight: Five Texas Seats, Five California Seats, And A Court Calendar
The arithmetic is short. Republicans won the House 220 to 215 in 2024; with vacancies and one member now sitting as an independent, the count on August 26 is 218 to 214, and 218 is a majority, so Democrats need a net gain of three seats from the 2024 result. The reason the market is at 85 and not higher is that the lines were redrawn mid-decade, mostly in one direction. Per the Texas Tribune on April 27, the Supreme Court upheld Texas's new map in a summary ruling, Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson dissenting, ending "for now, the lengthy legal battle over Texas' efforts to add as many as five more Republican seats to the U.S. House," an effort the state took up "after President Donald Trump pushed the state to help shore up the GOP's narrow majority." A three-judge panel had found the map a likely racial gerrymander in November; its lone dissenter, Judge Jerry Smith, criticized that opinion as "the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed." The Texas Senate race on the same new lines, Paxton against Talarico, is the other half of that state's story.
California answered on November 4, 2025, when voters passed Proposition 50, 64.42% to 35.58%, a map worth about five Democratic-leaning seats. Florida went further. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a map on May 4 that, per WUSF on May 27, "could lead to Republicans gaining four seats," and Leon Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes rejected the lawsuit Common Cause and Equal Ground brought against it, writing that "the potential partisan intent in the 2026 map is the lesser of the two evils." The state Supreme Court declined to block it on June 10, per Spectrum News 13, over a challenge that accused the Legislature of drawing "the largest pro-Republican skew of any congressional map in history for any state with 15 or more districts". Common Cause Florida's Amy Keith: "We will continue our fight to protect the will of Floridians who overwhelmingly voted to ban partisan gerrymandering in this state." Add Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama for Republicans, Utah for Democrats, and the AP's May 9 tally reads: "14 more House seats that Republicans believe they could win and six that could give Democrats an edge. Overall, that would mean a potential eight-seat advantage for the GOP ahead of a midterm election, when the president's party normally loses seats." None of it has moved the Democratic contract out of its 83-to-86 band: the market priced the maps in the spring and has been trading the environment since.
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What Moves The Price From Here
- September 1 and September 8, 2026. Massachusetts votes on the 1st and New Hampshire on the 8th, the last primaries of the cycle. This week's was South Carolina's August 25 runoff, where state Sen. Darline Graham, sister of the late Lindsey Graham, beat Rep. Ralph Norman 52.5% for the Senate nomination with Trump's backing, which leaves Norman's 5th District open. After September 8 every toss-up is a named matchup; the raters' changes, three toward Democrats in two days, are the thing to watch.
- The September and October polling rounds. The August averages run from plus 4 at Morning Consult to plus 6.6 at Silver Bulletin. For the Republican contract to be worth the 30 cents somebody paid tonight, that band has to close toward even by October; the special-election record Donner published on August 19 points the other way, and the raters' final rounds in October will say which held.
- November 3, 2026. Election Day. The contract can settle on the networks' calls that night or in the days after; if the count runs long, it settles on whichever party's member is Speaker on February 1, 2027. Either way, this one is decided on November 3, 2026.
Hero illustration: OddsShopper, in the house collage style. United States Capitol photo by Noclip, licensed Public domain; photos cropped, toned, and composited.
Prices quoted are live Kalshi market prices as of August 26, 2026, 8:15 p.m. Eastern, and will keep moving until this market settles after the November 3, 2026 vote. OddsShopper covers prediction markets as an independent analyst: any model or panel figures referenced are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. This article does not advocate for or against any candidate or party. Trading involves risk; contracts can go to zero.
