Prices as of September 1, 2026, 11:30 p.m. Eastern, from Kalshi's public API, after the Associated Press call and Kalshi's settlement. The sourced record behind the campaign section is unchanged from the August editions.
Ed Markey is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. The Associated Press called the primary over Rep. Seth Moulton at 8:31 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, September 1, per GBH and the Boston Globe, with fewer than 5% of precincts reporting, and Moulton conceded around 9 p.m. On Kalshi, the contract this page had quoted at 98.8 cents on August 31 closed at 8:34 p.m. and settled at a dollar at 9:04 p.m. The primary boards still trading are the size of the win, and they price a Markey margin of 30 points or more near 80%. How the market and the model panel graded, why the voters who doubted his age voted for him anyway, and what November against John Deaton already trades at, are below.
Markey turned 80 in July. Suffolk University, polling 500 likely Democratic-primary voters for the Boston Globe from August 13 to 16, found in its published crosstabs that 11.2% would not vote for him because of his age and another 33.4% said it made them less likely to. That was 44.6% of the people choosing the Democratic nominee saying his age counted against him, in a poll that still had him beating Moulton, who is 47, by 52.2% to 37.6%. The Globe's Samantha J. Gross and Anjali Huynh found the voter who explained the gap: Adam Tessier, a 39-year-old accountant from Dracut, told them on August 18 that aging politicians worried him. Then: "I'll vote for the old man."
Tuesday night was a count of how many voters landed where Tessier did. The answer was more of the vote than Suffolk gave him, more than UMass gave him, and more than the most bullish public poll of the race gave him. That result is the grade on everything this page said in August, and the grading is the story now.
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The Board
Kalshi Democratic nominee board, settled September 1, 2026, at 9:04 p.m. Eastern (last prints before the close):
| Outcome | Price | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| Ed Markey | 99.9¢ | last trade before the close; settled yes, paid $1.00 |
| Seth Moulton | 0.1¢ | last trade before the close; settled no, paid $0 |
Those are the final prints, not the final prices: a settled contract has no bid and no ask, it has a result. Markey's strike settled yes, and Moulton's, Ayanna Pressley's and Alexander Rikleen's settled no. The timeline matters for anyone who traded it. The AP projected Markey at 8:31 p.m., per GBH's live blog, with the Boston Globe noting he was up by roughly 40 points in Worcester in the early returns. Kalshi closed the board at 8:34 p.m., three minutes after the call, and finalized it at 9:04 p.m. Nobody who held Markey through August was surprised by the direction; Kalshi's prior-session close had him bid at 99.0 cents against a 99.1 ask, up from the 98.6-to-99.0 quote this page carried on August 31, and the last trade before the close printed at 99.9.
Look twice at the volume. At 1 a.m. Eastern on primary day, September 1, our own pull showed about 811,700 Markey contracts traded lifetime. Kalshi's API after settlement reads more than 2.1 million on Markey's strike and more than 2.6 million on Moulton's. Most of the recorded lifetime volume arrived after that 1 a.m. pull, once the contract was already near certain, which is what a 99-cent contract looks like when it becomes a one-day yield trade rather than a bet on who wins.
The boards that were not decided are the two ladders, and they moved hard after 8 p.m.
| Markey Margin Of Victory (Still Trading) | Prior session close (bid / ask) | 11:30 p.m. September 1 (bid / ask) |
|---|---|---|
| At Least 20 Points | 80¢ / 87¢ | 99¢ / 100¢ |
| At Least 25 Points | 67¢ / 71¢ | 98¢ / 100¢ |
| At Least 30 Points | 48¢ / 52¢ | 78¢ / 86¢ |
| At Least 35 Points | 32¢ / 36¢ | 1¢ / 2¢ |
| At Least 40 Points | 10¢ / 19¢ | 1¢ / 2¢ |
| Markey Vote Share (Still Trading) | Prior session close (bid / ask) | 11:30 p.m. September 1 (bid / ask) |
|---|---|---|
| At Least 60% | 80¢ / 82¢ | 99¢ / 100¢ |
| At Least 65% | 38¢ / 40¢ | 72¢ / 87¢ |
| At Least 70% | 5¢ / 7¢ | 1¢ / 2¢ |
Read the two ladders together and the market's central case is a Markey win between 30 and 35 points, on a vote share between 65% and 70%, with two rungs still unsettled and still priced like questions: 30 points on the margin board and 65% on the share board. The returns agree so far. With a little more than 55% of the vote counted at about 11 p.m., boston.com's tally had Markey just over 65%. The rung I kept coming back to on primary-day morning was 65, then priced at 38 to 40 cents, a contract that only cashes if Markey beats his best public poll. The tally so far says he has. The 7NEWS/UNH survey published August 26 was the ceiling of the polling at 63% to 28%, and the returns are running past its share. These ladders settle on the certified result, not the election-night count, so those two rungs are the last open questions on the primary and they will stay open for a while.
What The Models Think
On August 26 we asked a panel of AI models the nominee question without showing them the price, only the sourced record. Eight of the panel's eight seats ran this board. In their final round they put Markey between 93% and 95%, a median of 94%, a few points under the 98.8-cent market this page quoted on August 31. Each started from the same two facts: a sitting senator with 82% approval among his own primary voters almost never loses renomination, and no nonpartisan August poll had him ahead by less than 14. One model: "Markey leads by 14–26 points in the two most reliable August polls with 82% approval among Democratic-primary voters one week before the election; such late double-digit leads essentially never reverse."
Grading it is simple. Both the market and the panel put Markey on the right side, and the market was more certain, so the market scores better on the night. The footnote is that the panel's discount was the right instinct applied to the wrong thing. In the August edition of this page the seats named a final independent poll inside five points as the one event that would move them, and that was the correct risk to name; it just never arrived. What the nominee board could not express was the margin: the panel's rationale leaned on the 14-to-26-point August polls, the returns have Markey past 65% of the vote, and the ladder puts the margin between 30 and 35 with the 30 rung still priced at 78 to 86. The ladders priced that better than the models did, with money on the line.
These are model estimates, not predictions. The market has real money behind it; the panel has only the record.
The case for each side of the Massachusetts (MA) Senate primary, priced on Kalshi before the vote: Why Ed Markey (D) Will Win the MA Senate Primary · Why Seth Moulton (D) Will Win The Mass. Senate Primary · Why John Deaton (R) Will Win Massachusetts' Senate Primary
The Doubters Voted For Him Anyway
Here is the arithmetic the ladders were pricing. Suffolk had 44.6% of the electorate saying Markey's age counted against him, which leaves 55.4% who said it did not. Even if every one of those 55.4% voted for him, clearing 65% requires roughly one doubter in five to vote for him anyway, and every non-doubter who went to Moulton pushes that share higher. That is the Tessier position, and the tally says it was a common one.
The same crosstabs explained why. Asked which candidate was more progressive, Suffolk's respondents said Markey, 47.8% to 22.4%; his approval among Democratic-primary voters sat at 82% to 14%. Warren, Sanders, and on August 20 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him; Gov. Maura Healey endorsed nobody. Moulton's most prominent endorsement was the Boston Globe editorial board, which backed him on August 18 under the closing line "The future must be now." Suffolk's David Paleologos told the Globe the polling "has never suggested the primary was close," and Politico Magazine's August 22 framing, "a real test of what the party values more: age or ideology," got its answer in one direction, by a share the returns put past 65%.
Markey said it himself on Tuesday night. The Globe quoted him crediting "a progressive movement fueled by young people demanding more from their leaders" and telling the room, "Young people will show us the way." His campaign refrain, per the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, had been "It's not your age, it's the age of your ideas," and the age crosstab is the evidence that enough voters accepted the trade. Moulton conceded at about 9 p.m.: "He has my full support as our Democratic nominee and we must stand united to protect our democracy and defeat Donald Trump," per the Globe. Turnout was the one input that could have compressed the margin, and it did not: GBH reported nearly 11% of registered voters had cast ballots before primary day by mail or early in person, and described election day itself as relatively slow and rainy. A low-turnout primary is an organized-base primary, and the base was Markey's.
Every public poll of the race undershot his vote share:
| Poll (Field Dates) | Markey | Moulton | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emerson (May 3–4) | 37% | 32% | 5 |
| UMass Amherst/WCVB (Aug 5–12), With Leaners | 60% | 32% | 28 |
| Suffolk/Globe (Aug 13–16) | 52.2% | 37.6% | 14.6 |
| 7NEWS/UNH (Published Aug 26) | 63% | 28% | 35 |
| Count At ~11 P.m., 55% Reporting (Boston.com) | just over 65% | not yet reported | not yet reported (ladder implies 30 to 35) |
The row that matters is the last one: the returns are running past even UNH's vote share, the boldest public poll of the race and the one the market chose to trade, though the 35-point margin rung's collapse to 1 or 2 cents says UNH's margin was a few points too generous. Suffolk's 14.6 would have landed in the 12-to-16-point band, which asked 5 cents at 1 a.m. on primary day.
For scale, Markey's 2020 primary win over Joe Kennedy III, on September 1, 2020, was 55.4% to 44.5%, about 11 points. Against Moulton, a sitting congressman with more cash on hand and the Globe's endorsement, the count has him ten points of vote share above that, and the ladder says the margin is on track to roughly triple it.
How A Five-Point Race Became A Sixty-Five-Percent Night
Nobody was pricing margins in the spring. This looked like a contest: Emerson College had it 37% to 32% on May 3 and 4, with Moulton ahead 38% to 32% among unenrolled voters, the independents who can take a Democratic ballot here. Markey's Kalshi price bottomed at 62 cents on July 20, two weeks after the first debate. A price in the low 60s says the market thought this was a real fight, and for a few weeks it was.
Then the August polls landed. UMass Amherst and WCVB, in the field August 5 to 12, put Markey up 54% to 28%, 60% to 32% with leaners. Suffolk followed. On August 18, the day both published, Markey's contract jumped from 83 to 90 cents and Moulton's fell from 17 to 8. From there the price only climbed: 92.9 the Friday after the third debate, 94.4 the Monday after, 98.8 by August 31, 99.9 on the last print. The market's read of the August polls was that they understated it, and the returns say the market was right.
The price's steepest August climb before the polls landed, 73 cents to 80, came out of the second debate, on Boston 25 and GBH on August 3, and out of the attack that was supposed to reverse it. Moulton asked, per GBH, "Why would you even take a meeting with a lobbyist on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein?" Markey: "At no time did I ever meet with anyone related to Epstein on anything that has to do with Epstein at all." Two days later he called it "absolutely inaccurate. It is desperate. It is an attempt to engage in the politics of smear." PolitiFact rated Moulton's claim Mostly False on August 6: the basis was a December 2015 email in which a lobbyist told Epstein he had briefed "Senator Ed Markey" on a Senegal matter, a corruption case involving Karim Wade, and, in PolitiFact's words, "The email doesn't show Markey knew of Epstein's involvement in Wade's case." WBUR's fact-check added that Moulton himself accepted $2,000 from one of the same lobbyists. Markey's contract went from 73 cents on debate night to 80 on the day the rating published. The attack did not reopen the market; the price moved the other way, and that pattern, an attack landing and the contract rising, is the organizing fact of the whole August chart.
The trans-athlete fight cut the other way. Moulton told the New York Times in November 2024 that he did not want his daughters "getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete." Markey said he had thrown trans kids "under the political bus," and at the second debate Moulton apologized, per GBH: "I'm sorry if my comments hurt you." At the third debate on August 20, per Boston.com, Markey pressed again: "Congressman Moulton threw those kids under the political bus after the election of 2024." UMass found 67% of Democratic-primary voters less likely to back a candidate who "expressed positions opposing transgender rights." Put that next to GBH's turnout note, 11% voting early and a slow, rainy election day, and you have the mechanism: a low-turnout primary is decided by the organized base, two-thirds of that base said Moulton's 2024 comment was disqualifying, and the age crosstab, for all its 44.6%, never carried a "will not vote" number bigger than 11.2. The trans-rights number did more work than the age number, and the ladders priced it that way.
Politico Magazine, August 22: "a real test of what the party values more: age or ideology." The nominee board answered in August. Tuesday's returns answered louder.
The most replayed moment was smaller. Asked about artificial intelligence, Markey said, "I use whatever is inside of my iPhone and my iPad, whatever comes up and I don't know what companies my iPad might be using." Moulton: "With all due respect, senator, if you don't even know what you're using on your phone or your iPad, this is why we need a new generation of leaders to regulate these technologies." Markey answered that "it doesn't make any difference whether it's called Siri or it's called Claude." Moulton carried it to CBS's Face the Nation on August 23: "He's been in Washington for 50 years, Margaret." The war exchange split at the fact-checkers: WBUR rated Moulton's charge that Markey had voted to send young Americans like him to Iraq accurate, and Markey's charge that Moulton had voted for a trillion-dollar war budget aimed at Iran mostly incorrect.
Money was the one column Moulton won: Federal Election Commission filings through August 12 showed him with $1,835,336 on hand to Markey's $1,348,676. The Commonwealth Together PAC spent six figures attacking Moulton's roughly $13 million net worth and stock holdings, the Washington Examiner reported on August 13, and Markey did not disavow it despite signing Bernie Sanders' letter declaring that "Getting super PAC money and dark money out of Democratic primaries is not some pie in the sky dream." PolitiFact rated the PAC's allegation that "Moulton voted with Republicans to thank ICE" Mostly False in April. On the other side, a dark-money group led by a Moulton donor ran "Pass the torch" ads against Markey's tenure from spring on. Moulton's cash edge of about $490,000, the Globe's endorsement and a national television hit never threatened the nomination, and the count so far says they did not compress the margin much either.
More on this: 2026 Senate Races: Every Kalshi Board We Track · Massachusetts Primary 2026 Results: Minogue And Markey Called, Lynch Still Counting · Why Ed Markey (D) Will Win the MA Senate Primary · Why Seth Moulton (D) Will Win The Mass. Senate Primary · Sununu vs Brown: Trump's Pick Skips the Last Debate
What Moves The Price From Here
Markey's opponent was settled before Markey was. John Deaton was unopposed in the Republican primary, per GBH and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and Kalshi finalized his nominee contract at yes at 8:54 p.m., ten minutes before the Democratic board, with Charlie Baker, Christopher Thrasher and Lewis Evangelidis resolved at no on a primary none of them entered. Deaton is a known quantity to this electorate: the certified 2024 result against Elizabeth Warren was 59.8% to 40.0%. The general election is November 3, 2026, on the map that decides Senate control, one of every Senate board we track. If cents-as-probability is new to you, how a Senate race trades on Kalshi is a five-minute read.
Deaton sits at 30% in both August polls and in Suffolk's June survey, and that stuck number is the whole November trade. Suffolk's June statewide poll had Markey over Deaton 55% to 30%. UMass Amherst and WCVB, in the field August 5 to 12 with 800 registered voters, had it 51% to 30%, and UNH's August 20 to 24 survey had it 49% to 30%. His best number all year was 34% in UNH's June poll. Markey's number moves with the undecided pile; Deaton's barely moves at all. Markey's own line runs the other way, 55, 51, 49: he is shedding share as the undecided pile grows, not breaking it. The winner board priced the Democratic side near 97 cents at our August 25 pull, so the current polling and the market price make the margin the more active trade than the winner, and the live question is how much of that undecided pile breaks back to the Democrat by November.
So the November trade, like the primary trade, is a margin trade, and Kalshi already lists it. Its general-election margin ladder for this seat was quoting, at the same 11:30 p.m. pull, a Democratic win by 23 points or more at 79 to 87 cents, by 31 or more at 65 to 73, by 35 or more at 48 to 56, and by 43 or more at 8 to 16. The rung to watch is 35, a coin flip on whether Markey nearly doubles Warren's 19.8-point margin against this same opponent, and it sits on 246 contracts, which is less a price than an opinion. Here is the tension in it. The three general-election polls on this page have the race at 19 to 25 points, right around Warren's 19.8, and the freshest of them, UNH's 49 to 30, has Markey a hair behind her pace. A 35-point rung at 48 to 56 cents is the market pricing a primary-driven read the survey data has not confirmed: buying it is buying the market's view against the polling's view. Two things would move it. A poll with Deaton above 30 would push it down; the 2024 result says his ceiling with this electorate is 40, and no poll this year has put him above 34. A certified primary margin above 30, which is where the primary ladder has it, would strengthen the case that Markey can approach or beat Warren's margin, though a primary electorate of registered Democrats and unenrolled voters on a rainy day with 11% early turnout is a different crowd from a November midterm, and the ladder has to price that gap too. The risks are the ones a thin book always carries: a rung that trades a few hundred contracts can gap several cents on one order, and the contract does not settle until the November result is certified, so the money is parked for two months. Tuesday's returns are the first primary-electorate evidence the market has for the high rungs; the November polling has not caught up to them, and that gap is the trade.
Markey's own line for November came Tuesday night, per the Globe: "Donald Trump brings out the Malden in me every single day." The primary asked whether Democratic voters would trade Markey's half-century in Washington for Moulton's generational-change argument, and 44.6% of them said the age gave them pause before roughly two-thirds voted for the older candidate anyway. The general asks a question this state has answered the same way since 2010. The market has settled the who at a dollar twice in one night. What it is still pricing, on both the primary ladder and the November one, is how loudly Massachusetts says it.
Hero illustration: OddsShopper, in the house collage style. Kalshi prices quoted are from Kalshi's public API as of September 1, 2026, 11:30 p.m. Eastern. The Democratic and Republican nominee boards are settled; the margin-of-victory, vote-share and general-election ladders remain open and will keep moving until they settle on certified results. 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.
