Search for the Kalshi impeachment odds and you will find prices that look, at first glance, impossible to square with the news. One rung of the ladder trades for pocket change while the next rung up trades in the high 60s, and people read those numbers as the market predicting that somebody is about to be marched out of Washington. It is not. The contract behind these prices settles on one narrow, mechanical thing: a vote. Not a conviction, not a removal, not a resignation. That single distinction is the most misunderstood fact in this entire subject, and it is the reason the prices look the way they do. This piece walks through what the contract actually requires, and along the way covers a definition buried in the settlement rules that is far broader than most readers expect.
The Quick Answer
Kalshi's cabinet impeachment market, ticker KXIMPEACHCABINET, asks whether any member of the cabinet will be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives before a series of deadlines. As of August 18, 2026, the three open rungs trade at 1.6 to 4.6 cents for Before 2027, 63 to 68 cents for Before 2028, and 64 to 69 cents for Before January 20, 2029, with roughly 87,900 contracts traded across the open rungs. A yes settlement requires only a House vote to impeach; nobody has to leave office. What triggers a payout, the 22 offices the contract counts as "the cabinet," and why the top two rungs sit a single cent apart are all below.
The Board, As Of August 18, 2026
Every price in this article comes from the same live read of the order book, and every one of them will drift after publication, so treat the table as a snapshot of how the ladder is shaped rather than a quote to act on. Prices are in cents; every contract settles at a full dollar or at zero.
| Rung | Yes bid | Yes ask | Last trade | Contracts traded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before 2027 | 1.6c | 4.6c | 1.4c | ~47,700 |
| Before 2028 | 63c | 68c | 68c | ~34,300 |
| Before Jan 20, 2029 | 64c | 69c | 68c | ~5,900 |
The row worth staring at is the first one. The near rung last traded at 1.4 cents — the market prices an impeachment vote before the calendar turns as a deep longshot — while the same question priced through 2027 trades in the 60s. That is a nearly fifty-fold gap between adjacent rungs, and it is the market saying the probability lives in the later calendar, not the near one. If you want the general habit of translating these cents into likelihoods, a contract's price is roughly the market's probability, and you can convert the cents into American odds if that language is more familiar.
One more piece of board history that shows the mechanics working: this series also listed a Before July 2026 rung. Its deadline passed with no House impeachment vote, and it settled no. Deadline rungs are not opinions that linger; they expire and pay out, one way or the other, on schedule.
What The Contract Actually Requires
The settlement rule is one sentence long. If a member of the cabinet is impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives before the rung's deadline, that rung resolves to yes.
Read the sentence again for what is missing. There is no Senate in it. There is no trial, no conviction, no removal, no resignation. Impeachment, in the constitutional sense the contract uses, is a House vote approving articles of impeachment by a simple majority. That vote alone settles the contract. What happens afterward, whether the Senate acquits, convicts, or never takes it up at all, is irrelevant to the payout.
The rules also define "the cabinet" far more broadly than the word suggests in conversation. The contract names 22 offices: the Vice President, the fifteen executive department heads, from the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense to the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, plus the EPA Administrator, the OMB Director, the Director of National Intelligence, the Trade Representative, the SBA Administrator, and the White House Chief of Staff. A qualifying House vote against any one of those 22 people settles every open rung whose deadline has not passed. This is the promised fine print: a market casually described as being about "the cabinet" includes the Vice President and a handful of offices most people would never list.
Impeachment Is Not Removal
Here is the distinction that untangles the prices. Impeachment is an accusation, not an eviction. The House impeaches by simple majority; removal requires a separate Senate trial and a two-thirds vote to convict. Those are different chambers, different thresholds, and historically very different outcomes.
The historical record makes the gap concrete. Three presidents have been impeached by the House, across four total impeachment votes, and not one was removed by the Senate. At the cabinet level, the sample is even cleaner: in the entire history of the country, exactly two cabinet officers have been impeached. Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached in 1876, minutes after he resigned, and the Senate acquitted him. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached in 2024, the Senate dismissed the articles without a trial, and he remained in office. Two impeachments in roughly 150 years, zero removals.
Under this contract's rules, both of those episodes settle yes. That is the whole point. A rung trading in the 60s is not the market pricing a two-thirds Senate conviction or a vacancy at a department. What it prices is one chamber holding one vote. A House majority is a political threshold, not a legal one, which is why these prices move with House arithmetic rather than with anything happening in a courtroom. We report what the market prices; whether anyone should or should not be impeached is not our subject, and the contract does not care either.
A Nested Ladder, Read Rung By Rung
The rungs are nested. Any impeachment vote that lands before 2027 also lands before 2028 and before January 20, 2029, so each longer window fully contains the shorter one. On a nested ladder, a later rung should never price below an earlier one; the longer window can only add chances, never subtract them.
Now look back at the table with that rule in mind. The board currently obeys it, but only just: Before 2028 bids 63 cents and Before January 20, 2029 bids 64, so an extra year and nineteen days of coverage is being bid exactly one cent higher, and both rungs last traded at the same 68 cents. The market is effectively saying that if this vote happens at all, it happens before 2028 — the final year of the window adds almost nothing to the price.
That near-flat step deserves some skepticism before it gets a story. The last column of numbers explains why: the 2029 rung has traded about 5,900 contracts lifetime against roughly 34,300 on the 2028 rung, and it carries only about 1,400 open positions against roughly 16,300 on the rung below it. On a book that thin, a quoted price mostly reflects the last few participants who bothered to show up, and a modest order can push it around. If a ladder this thin ever prints the later rung below the earlier one — the thing the nesting logic says should never happen — read it as thinness, not information, and certainly not an arbitrage. Liquidity decides how much a quoted price actually means, and this ladder is a textbook illustration: the wide quote on the long rung is a rough sketch, not a hardened consensus. None of that is a mispricing to harvest, and nothing about it is a trade recommendation; crossing a five-cent spread to "correct" a thin book is how a reader donates the spread to whoever is resting there.
A Worked Example: What Each Side Pays
Make the mechanics concrete at the August 18, 2026 quotes, remembering every Kalshi contract settles at a full dollar or at zero.
- Buying Yes On Before 2027 At The 4.6-Cent Ask risks 4.6 cents per contract. If the House votes to impeach any of the 22 covered officials before the calendar turns, the contract settles at a full dollar, a profit of 95.4 cents per contract before Kalshi's trading fees. If the deadline passes without a vote, the 4.6 cents is gone.
- Buying No On The Same Rung costs about 98.4 cents per contract to collect the remaining 1.6 if the longshot dies quietly. Selling an unlikely outcome collects a small premium and risks most of a dollar, and at these prices a single yes settlement erases the premiums from a very long run of winning trades. That asymmetry, not the hit rate, is what makes selling long shots so unforgiving: a strategy built on collecting pennies can look brilliant right up until a single vote erases a long green run, and a red day after many small wins is that trade working as designed, not a malfunction.
Neither line is a recommendation. We publish how the market works, not a book to copy, and a two-sided market means informed money is resting on both sides of every rung.
Where This Market Fits, And Who Can Trade It
What separates this contract from most of the politics catalog is how little judgment its settlement requires. Plenty of event contracts turn on an interpretation — what counts as a recession, whether a statement qualifies as an announcement — but a House impeachment is a recorded roll-call vote in the Congressional Record, so the question of whether it happened has a public, binary answer the moment the gavel falls. That is why, if a settlement ever looks contestable, the formal process for disputed outcomes matters less here than almost anywhere else on the exchange. The contract sits alongside election prediction markets in Kalshi's politics family, and Kalshi itself is a CFTC-regulated exchange with broad, state-specific availability under federal oversight; the legal footing of prediction markets is its own subject worth reading before a first deposit.
FAQ
What are the Kalshi impeachment odds right now? As of August 18, 2026, Before 2027 trades at 1.6 to 4.6 cents, Before 2028 at 63 to 68 cents, and Before January 20, 2029 at 64 to 69 cents. Prices move continuously, so check the live board before quoting any of them.
Does the contract pay if a cabinet member resigns? No. Resignation is not impeachment. The only trigger is a House vote to impeach; an official can resign, be fired, or leave office any other way and the contract still settles no unless that vote happens first.
Does impeachment mean removal from office? No, and this is the distinction the whole market turns on. The House impeaches by simple majority; removal requires two-thirds of the Senate after a trial. The only two cabinet officers ever impeached were acquitted or had the articles dismissed, and the contract pays at the House vote regardless of what the Senate does.
Who counts as a cabinet member under the rules? Twenty-two named offices: the Vice President, the fifteen executive department heads, and six additional cabinet-rank officials including the EPA Administrator, OMB Director, Director of National Intelligence, Trade Representative, SBA Administrator, and White House Chief of Staff.
The Vote Is The Product
So what do the Kalshi impeachment odds actually say? They say the market thinks a House impeachment vote against someone in a 22-person pool is fading toward a longshot over the rest of 2026 and is more likely than not on a multi-year horizon, and they say nothing at all about anyone leaving office. The callback worth keeping is that historical scoreboard: two cabinet impeachments in a century and a half, zero removals, and both would have paid this contract in full. The ladder is pricing an accusation, because an accusation is all the contract requires. If event contracts are new to you, start with what prediction markets are and how they work, then browse our prediction-markets hub, where we follow live boards daily. And if your interest in odds runs more toward game day than committee rooms, our analysts post free expert picks today across every major sport.
Stokastic trades prediction markets and holds positions in them. We have no affiliate or commercial relationship with Kalshi. Kalshi contracts are CFTC-regulated event derivatives traded on a designated contract market, not sportsbook wagers, and they can lose their full value. 18+, available where Kalshi operates. Nothing here is trading advice.
