PA-7 House Odds: The Wall On Bob Brooks Is Already Gone

What are the PA-7 House odds now? As of 1:18 a.m. ET on Monday, October 26, 2026, Democrat Bob Brooks is 87 cents bid and 88 cents ask on Kalshi to win Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District, roughly seven chances in eight. Republican incumbent Ryan Mackenzie is 12 bid, 13 ask. Brooks was 79 on Thursday, September 10, fell to 68 overnight on Friday, September 11, with no news in the district, won all of it back within nine days, and has since gone eight cents higher. The single sell order at 69 that capped his price that night is long gone, and so, for the second time this month, is the 50,000-contract bid that held him up: it sat at 86 on Friday afternoon and is gone at this pull, with about 1,700 contracts bid across the five levels nearest his price. The third public poll of the race, from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College, landed on Sunday, October 25, with Brooks up five among likely voters, 49 to 44, and neither quote moved on it; the day's biggest trade bought 1,215 contracts of Mackenzie, paying up to 16. Brooks's last trade, on Sunday evening, was a single contract bought at 88, four hours after 150 were sold at 87; Mackenzie's was 200 bought at 13 on Sunday night. The candidates, the three polls the price rests on, and what 87 cents says about Brooks's chances are below.

This is a race the market rates as more settled than the polling does. The three public polls have Brooks up four, five and five, the newest of them inside a margin of error the pollster puts at 5.7 to 5.8 points, in a Lehigh Valley district Mackenzie won by 4,062 votes two years ago, and the Cook Political Report rated it a toss-up from May until Friday, October 9, when it moved the seat to leans Democratic, ten days after Sabato's Crystal Ball did the same. An 87-cent price says the market is looking past those margins to two bigger facts: a Democratic year, and an incumbent running as Trump's candidate in a district that split almost evenly for president. The month since the drop showed how much conviction sits behind the number. The price took an 11-cent hit on nothing in the district, earned all 11 back without a new poll, then moved eight cents higher still, and two independent polls and both rating changes landed inside what it already said.

The District And The Two Candidates

Pennsylvania's 7th covers Lehigh, Northampton and Carbon counties plus part of Monroe, which means Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton and the Poconos foothills. It has picked the presidential winner five elections in a row, and Trump carried it 51 to 48 in 2024. Its 2024 House result was one of the closest in the country: Mackenzie, then a state representative, unseated three-term Democrat Susan Wild by 4,062 votes, 203,688 to 199,626. The Philadelphia Inquirer ranks that one-point margin as the seventh smallest of the 435 House races that year.

Brooks won the Democratic nomination on May 19 in a four-way primary, a result City & State Pennsylvania called hotly contested; the certified count gave him 41.0 percent, 28,232 votes, to 21.3 for Ryan Crosswell, 19.9 for Lamont McClure and 17.8 for Carol Obando-Derstine. He spent 20 years as a Bethlehem firefighter, has run the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association since 2021, owns a lawn-care company and coaches high school baseball in Nazareth. His endorsement list runs from Bernie Sanders to Josh Shapiro to Pete Buttigieg, and the DCCC put him in its Red to Blue program. Shapiro's line at the primary result was blunt: "Bob Brooks is the fighter the Lehigh Valley needs — and we're going to send him to Congress to deliver for our families and put a check on the corruption in DC."

Mackenzie's case rests on the district's drift. Legis1 counts Republican registration up more than 8 percent since the 2022 midterms and Democratic registration down more than 2 percent. He has campaigned alongside the president rather than at a distance: Trump toured the Mack Trucks plant in Macungie on June 23, Speaker Mike Johnson campaigned with him in August, and on Thursday, September 10, Mackenzie spoke at the first Republican midterm convention in Dallas. "I'm running in one of the top races again, and it will determine the future direction for our nation," he said, per the Inquirer.

The Two Polls, And What The Price Makes Of Them

For 11 weeks there was exactly one public poll of Brooks against Mackenzie. GBAO Research, polling for the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC, surveyed the district from June 29 to July 2 and found Brooks 47, Mackenzie 43, with Trump's favorability at 44 to 51. The release, dated July 9, does not publish a sample size or margin of error. It is a sponsored poll, and until September 24 it was the entire public polling record.

The first independent poll arrived on Thursday, September 24. Franklin & Marshall College surveyed 357 registered voters in the district from September 9 to 20 and found Brooks 45, Mackenzie 40, with 16 percent undecided and a margin of error of 5.8 points. Brooks leads among independents and moderates, though the subgroups are too small for the college to publish the splits. One in four voters in the district rated Trump's job performance excellent or good, 73 percent said fair or poor and 55 percent said their own finances are worse than a year ago, per PoliticsPA's write-up of the release. Berwood Yost, who runs the poll, put the caveat in one sentence: "The number of undecideds means that either candidate can win."

Set the polls against the price and the market's read is clear. A four-point lead in a sponsored poll, a five-point lead with a sixth of the sample undecided, and a second five-point lead among likely voters, from the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College poll of October 16 to 22 released on Sunday, October 25, which the first What Moved section below covers, in a seat decided by one point two years ago, would on their own price out near 68 cents, about two chances in three. The market is not pricing the margins alone, and it is right not to. So the fairest reading of the September 11 drop was a large seller disagreeing with a price rather than reacting to news, and the fairest reading of everything since is that the rest of the market disagreed back, then kept going. Brooks is 87, above where he stood before the drop, and the poll that could have tested the sellers arrived a week after the price had moved back through their level, and two days after it jumped to 83. What 87 cents is pricing that the polls are not is the question the rest of this page answers.

The Record Both Campaigns Are Running On

The campaign turned personal in late August, and the record is where the price will get its next news. Every item below was public before the September 11 drop, so none of it explains the drop.

On August 27, the Guardian reported that Mackenzie's LinkedIn profile and other biographical references described him as a licensed Pennsylvania real estate salesperson, that the license was issued in 2006 and expired in 2008 without renewal, and that his campaign would not say whether he ever made a sale; a spokesperson called the references "passing mentions, mostly from third parties." The Guardian also noted earlier reporting that in 2020 his dating-app profile had listed his age as 29 when he was 37. Two days after that story, the Brooks contract hit its high of 89 cents.

On that same August 27, Mackenzie's campaign alleged in a statement covered by Keystone Newsroom that Brooks had called volunteer firefighters "sh*tbags and scabs" while leading the union and had taken pay raises while cutting member benefits; UAW Local 677 members defended Brooks in the same piece. Earlier, on July 9, the Washington Free Beacon reported from state records that Brooks Lawn Care carried no workers' compensation policy from November 30, 2017 to December 28, 2021, which the outlet called an apparent violation of a state law requiring coverage for any employer with at least one employee. Mackenzie's campaign said Brooks "illegally skipped out on providing workers' compensation coverage for his own employees"; the Brooks campaign did not respond to that outlet. And in May, during the primary, Brooks told a Lehigh University audience that Shapiro had asked his union to endorse a Republican in the 2024 treasurer's race, then retracted it in a statement quoted by City & State: "I misspoke and made an inaccurate comment." Crosswell's response at the time: "So he was either lying then, or he is lying now."

On the incumbent's side, the older wound is the February 2025 budget resolution that directed the committee overseeing Medicaid to find $880 billion in savings, which Democrats cast as Medicaid cuts. Lehigh Valley Public Media covered more than 100 protesters outside Mackenzie's Salisbury Township office on February 19, 2025, and a Democratic town hall in Bethlehem weeks later, which Mackenzie answered with a telephone town hall the same evening, his first town hall since taking office. Brooks's September 9 statement, reported by Keystone Newsroom, leans on it: "Working people across the Lehigh Valley are paying more for gas, groceries, and health care because of Ryan Mackenzie's votes in Washington. Instead of fixing it, he's flying to Dallas to kiss the ring of Donald Trump and his party bosses."

The debate fight is the freshest item on the record. Armchair Lehigh Valley reported on September 8 that Mackenzie offered four dates for WFMZ's Business Matters, starting that day, and Brooks accepted only the last, October 21, recorded at 10 a.m. before a studio audience and airing October 26 in two half-hour segments. Mackenzie's campaign said Brooks was "so desperate to avoid accountability for his lies, frauds, and crooked schemes that he won't even give voters a full chance to compare the candidates"; Brooks's campaign said he "looks forward to contrasting his record of service" against "Mackenzie's record of jacking up costs, ripping away health care, and supporting a reckless war of choice in Iran." Mackenzie's stated reason for wanting an earlier date was that mail ballots typically reach Pennsylvania voters in mid-October, so the one debate would air after many of them were already in. That debate did not happen: Brooks withdrew from it on Monday, October 19, over a workers' compensation ad, which the October 17 to 23 section below covers.

The record in one line

an accusation about the incumbent's résumé, allegations about the challenger's union leadership and his company's insurance, a retracted claim about the governor, and a Medicaid budget plan that drew protests to his district office before he voted for it. Every item was public, and priced, before September 11.

The Board

Kalshi's PA-7 winner contracts and the House control contract, live bid and ask against the same board at this page's last stamp on October 23.

Contract	Party	Bid	Ask	Where it stood at the October 23 stamp
PA-7: Bob Brooks	D	87¢	88¢	87/88¢, last trade 87.
PA-7: Ryan Mackenzie	R	12¢	13¢	12/13¢, last trade 12.
House Control: Democrats	D	90.3¢	90.4¢	91.3/91.4¢, last trade 91.4.

Kalshi, as of October 26, 2026, 1:18 a.m. ET. Last trades: Brooks 88 at 6:28 p.m. on Sunday, October 25, a single contract bought at the ask, four hours after 150 were sold into the 87 bid; Mackenzie 13 at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, 200 contracts; House control 90.4, the quote 90.3 bid and 90.4 ask. "Where it stood" is the same board at 2:50 p.m. ET on October 23, this page's previous stamp; at the October 17 stamp Brooks was 86/87 and Mackenzie 13/14, at the October 14 stamp Brooks was 86/87 and Mackenzie 13/14, at the October 8 stamp Brooks was 85/87 and Mackenzie 13/14, at the October 5 stamp Brooks was 85/86 and Mackenzie 13/15, at the October 2 stamp Brooks was 84/85 and Mackenzie 15/16, at the September 16 stamp Brooks was 74/75 and Mackenzie 25/27, and on the night of the September 11 drop Brooks was 68/69 and Mackenzie 33/34. These are market prices and estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. New to these contracts? The plain-English guide to how prediction markets work covers the mechanics in five minutes.

The House control row is the one that says what kind of move each leg was. The control contract was 85 cents bid for Democrats on the night of the drop and still 85 on September 16: the national odds stayed flat while this district's price swung 11 cents down and six back, which points to whoever sold Brooks making a call about this district and these two candidates rather than about November. Since then the two rows have mostly moved together, with the district moving more, and when they parted it was in the district's favor. House control is up five cents from the September 16 stamp, to 90.3, having given back a full cent in this window after adding 1.2 in the week before; Brooks is up 13, to 87 bid, and his 89 print on Thursday, October 22, matched the contract's high from August 29. The five cents he got back in the week of September 16, alongside four on the national board, were the country's move; the three he printed in one hour on Tuesday, September 22, the two his bid drifted up on the 84 prints of September 25 and 30, and the one his bid added on Monday, October 5, were his own. The cent his bid added in the week of October 8, on about 114 contracts of trade, came with a cent on the national board and was the country's; in the three days to October 17 neither his bid nor his ask moved, on about 170 contracts, while the national board added a tenth. The cent his bid added on Thursday, October 22, in a week of about 660 contracts, came with 1.2 cents on the national board and was the country's again, the district a shade behind it, and in the two and a half days to October 26 neither his bid nor his ask moved, on about 310 contracts, while the national board gave back a full cent, the first window since October 5 to 8 in which the country moved against him, and he did not follow it.

More live boards: who will win the House in 2026, Democrats 90¢ on Kalshi's control contract · the 2026 Senate election odds board, where the Senate control contract is 36¢ Republican · the TX-15 House board, another Republican-held House seat Kalshi favors a Democrat to flip, Bobby Pulido 81¢ · every open board on the prediction markets hub.

Hottest Prediction Markets Right Now

• 2028 Democratic presidential nominee · $232M traded
• 2027 Pro Football Champion · $159M traded
• 2028 U.S. Presidential Election winner? · $71M traded
• 2028 Republican presidential nominee · $68M traded
• College Football National Championship Winner · $49M traded
• Pro Baseball Champion · $45M traded

Every market above links to our full AI model verdict; browse them all on the OddsShopper prediction markets hub, and see how every settled call actually scored on the full graded scoreboard.

What Moved Since October 23

The 50,000-contract bid under him is gone again, and every order of 5,000 contracts or more on either book is gone with it but two. At the October 23 stamp the five bids nearest the Brooks price held 67,288 contracts, 602 at 87 above a 50,146-contract bid at 86, with 916 at 85, 10,520 at 84 and 5,104 at 83 beneath it, and the two nearest offers held 10,941, with 50,040 more offered at 90. At this pull the five bids hold 1,735: 330 at 87, 96 at 86, 11 at 85, 1,220 at 84 and 78 at 83. The offer side kept one order, about 10,500 contracts at 89, and lost the 50,040 at 90, where 2,050 now sit; the one level that grew is 88, 1,968 offered where there were 113. Under Mackenzie the 50,507-contract floor at 10 is 677 and the 50,240 offered at 14 is 137; the 10,276 bid at 11 is 10,081 and is the other order that stayed, and a new 11,010 is offered at 18, a level the October 23 book did not reach. That is the October 14 book again, the week the same orders left and the price did not need them, and this time the two orders that stayed are the same bet from two directions, a bid for Mackenzie at 11 and an offer of Brooks at 89, both of them paying 11 cents for the incumbent.

Nothing was bought through: about 310 contracts traded on Brooks in the window and about 1,600 on Mackenzie, so the orders were pulled. For the Brooks bid at 86 and the offer at 90 the tape cannot say when; for the incumbent's offers it can, because Sunday's 1,215-contract buy filled a hundredth of a contract at 14, 65 at 15 and 986 at 16, which is impossible against 50,240 resting at 14 and 10,165 at 15, so the Mackenzie book had emptied before 2:25 p.m. on Sunday and the buyer who paid 16 paid it into a thin book, not through a wall.

The quote did not move with the orders. Brooks is 87 bid and 88 ask, where he was on October 23, but 87 is now a quote resting on about 1,700 contracts, and a sell order the size of the one that knocked his bid down on October 8, 10,000 contracts, hitting today's 87 bid would clear all 1,735 bid between 87 and 83, every level the book shows, and keep going. The wall in this page's title is still the sell order at 69 that capped him on the night of September 11, and it is still gone; what is gone with it, for the second time this month, is the order that held him up.

What traded on him was smaller still, and most of it printed at 88. Brooks's contract printed 11 times in the window, about 310 contracts: 28 bought at 88 at 6:16 p.m. on Friday, October 23, the first trades at 88 of more than a hundredth of a contract since August 29, seven more at 88 late Friday night, 17 at 88 at 1:06 p.m. on Saturday, 50 at 88 at 4:32 a.m. on Sunday, October 25, half an hour before the Inquirer's poll story posted, and 13 at 88 between 12:52 and 2:02 p.m. on Sunday. Then, at 2:25 p.m., 40 were sold into the 87 bid, and at 2:28 p.m. 150 more, in fills of 40 and 110, the window's largest trade and, with the 40, its only taker sales; his last print was a single contract bought at 88 at 6:28 p.m. Sunday. His bid closed at 87 and his ask at 88 every hour of the window, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday each closed at 88, the highest daily closes on the contract since at least August 20, the start of the daily tape this page pulled. Open interest rose by 73 contracts, to 77,957. He is 87 bid and 88 ask, unchanged from the October 23 stamp, and the gap to the national board's bid is 3.3 cents, down from 4.3, every tenth of it the national board's.

Mackenzie's buyers paid 16 this time, nine hours after the poll, and the quote did not follow them: his ask was 13 before the trade and 13 at the end of the hour. At 2:25:11 p.m. on Sunday, October 25, the same second the 40 Brooks contracts were sold at 87, one buyer took 1,215 contracts of Mackenzie in 15 fills, 164 at 13, a hundredth of a contract at 14, 65 at 15 and 986 at 16, the largest fill 500; at 2:28:42, the same second the 150 Brooks were sold, 150 more at 15, in fills of 110 and 40. Sixteen is his highest print since September 30; every buyer from October 1 through Saturday had paid 15 or less, and as the first paragraph above says, the price was the book's thinness as much as the buyer's conviction, since the 50,240 that had been offered at 14 on Friday was gone before the order arrived. The tape cannot say whether the Brooks sales and the Mackenzie buys were one account, but they printed in the same two seconds, and together they are the two largest trades on either contract since the poll. The offer refilled behind the buyer by the end of the hour, and the last prints are 36 bought at 13 at 7:05 p.m. and 200 at 13 at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, his last trade, on which open interest fell by exactly 200, a holder and a short closing against each other. Takers bought about 1,600 contracts of him in the window and sold none. Open interest rose by about 540, to 68,478. He is 12 bid and 13 ask, unchanged from the October 23 stamp, and the gap between the two bids is still 75 cents.

The national board gave back a cent on the weekend and took most of it back by Monday, on no national headline this page can pin it to, and the shape of it is the point: in four Saturday hours takers sold about 246,000 contracts of Kalshi's House control contract against 14,600 bought, then from Sunday evening to the pull they bought about 112,000 against 10,000 sold, the contract printed 89.0 in between and is 90.3 bid at this pull, and open interest rose by 390,000 through all of it. That is a weekend round trip with new money arriving on both sides, not a one-way re-pricing, and it is why the district's gap to the national board is the narrowest on this page. The contract was 91.3 bid and 91.4 ask for Democrats at the October 23 stamp, held there through Friday evening and slipped a tenth in the 10 p.m. hour. The Saturday selling began at 8:35 a.m. on October 24, with 90,000 contracts into the bid in one second, 66,390 at 90.8 and 23,610 at 90.9, the largest fill 65,290, and three more sales of 42,000 to 52,000 contracts followed at 1:26, 5:24 and 9:37 p.m., the last of them printing 90.0 and leaving the bid at 90.1. By midnight it was back to 90.5 bid and 90.6 ask and sat there through Sunday morning; then at 4:02 p.m. on Sunday, October 25, a seller's 46,162 in one second, 1,146 at 90.1, 36,087 at 90.0 and 8,929 at 89.0, printed 89.0, the contract's lowest print since October 13, and for the next half hour sellers kept hitting 89.0, mostly one or two contracts every twenty seconds or so but including lots of 2,849 and 1,139, before the hour closed at 90.0 bid and 90.2 ask. Buyers took the hour back on Sunday night, 37,660 at 90.2 and 90.3 at 8:33 p.m., 36,672 of it in one fill, with 16,236 more up to 90.7 at 10:31 p.m. About 775,000 contracts traded in the window and open interest went from 14.53 million to 14.92 million. It is 90.3 bid and 90.4 ask, a cent below the October 23 stamp and two tenths above where it stood on October 17, and the gap to Brooks's bid is 3.3 cents, the narrowest at any stamp on this page: his bid did not move while the national board's came down a cent, so this time the cent was the country's and the district did not follow it.

The district news in the window was the poll this page said was the only test left, and the quote did not move on it. The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College polled about 400 likely voters in the district from October 16 to 22 and found Brooks 49, Mackenzie 44, a result the Inquirer reported at 5:01 a.m. on Sunday, October 25, and called within the margin of error, which is 5.7 to 5.8 points per district, with between 3 and 6 percent undecided across the four districts it polled; the same survey had Democrats leading or tied in all four Republican-held Pennsylvania seats it polled, Bob Harvie 48 to 46 over Brian Fitzpatrick in the 1st, Paige Cognetti 51 to 46 over Rob Bresnahan in the 8th and Janelle Stelson tied at 48 with Scott Perry in the 10th, per Siena. In this district 59 percent disapprove of the president's job performance, 39 percent say Mackenzie supports Trump too much against 35 percent who say about right, and voters gave Brooks the edge on the cost of living, foreign wars, data centers and corruption, per the Inquirer; PoliticsPA's crosstabs have Brooks viewed favorably by 39 percent and unfavorably by 35, with 18 percent saying they had not heard of the challenger, and the incumbent underwater, 37 favorable to 42 unfavorable. The Brooks campaign's line to the Inquirer: "We are running this like we're losing." It is the race's second independent poll and its first independent likely-voter sample, and its five points match Franklin & Marshall's five from September; a 49-44 result with a 5.7-to-5.8-point margin is, as the Inquirer wrote, within the margin of error. The market's answer was the Sunday afternoon tape above: 13 contracts bought on Brooks at 88 between 12:52 and 2:02 p.m., then 190 sold into his bid and 1,365 contracts of Mackenzie bought at up to 16 in the same two seconds, nine hours after the story, and both quotes where they had been by the end of the hour. On Friday, October 23, the Cook Political Report moved 19 more House ratings toward Democrats, six of them from toss-up to leans Democratic, and wrote that Democrats "now are favored outright in the 218 seats they need to win control"; this seat was not among the 19, having made the same move on October 9, and neither rating on it has changed since. The Cook note is dated Friday; the national board's slide began Friday night. The week before this window, October 17 to 23, is below.

What Moved From October 17 To October 23

The bid under him moved up a cent that week, and so did he. Every resting order of size on both contracts but one stepped up exactly a cent in the same direction while about 660 contracts traded on Brooks all week: the 50,165-contract bid that held him up at 85 at the October 17 stamp was 50,146 at 86 by the October 23 stamp, the 50,023 offered at 89 was 50,040 at 90, the 10,549 offered at 88 was 10,828 at 89, and the 5,050 bid at 82 was 5,104 at 83; the one that stayed was the 10,000-contract bid at 84, 10,070 then and 10,520 on October 23. Under Mackenzie the levels moved the mirror way, the floor from 11 to 10 and the big offer from 15 to 14, but came back smaller, 60,800 to 50,507 and 60,617 to 50,240, about 20,000 contracts of resting size gone from the incumbent's book while Brooks's orders returned at the same size a cent higher. That was someone re-pricing the district by a cent, not flow pushing it there. The quote went with the orders, from 86 bid and 87 ask to 87 and 88, with 602 at 87 above the 50,000-contract bid and 113 at 88 the only size between the bid and the 89 level; the five bids nearest his price held 67,288 contracts at the October 23 stamp, against 65,480 at the October 17 stamp, and the two nearest offers held 10,941, against 25,941. The 15,392 that was offered at 87 was not bought through: the largest buy at that price in the window was 301 contracts and all the buying at 87 together was about 430, and the ask stepped to 88 in the same hour as the 301, so the order was pulled or moved, and the tape cannot say whether the size moved before the quote or after it. The wall in this page's title is still the sell order at 69 that capped him on the night of September 11, and it is still gone; the order that held him up was a cent higher than it had been. A sell order the size of the one that knocked his bid down on October 8, 10,000 contracts, hitting the 87 bid of October 23 would have taken out the 602 at 87 and stopped against the 50,146 at 86.

What traded on him was small again, and it includes his highest print since August. Brooks's contract printed 32 times in the window, about 660 contracts: 27 at 87 across Saturday and Sunday, 51 bought at 87 between 5:25 and 5:31 p.m. on Monday, October 19, two hours after he pulled out of the debate, 34 sold into the 86 bid at 9:20 p.m. that night, 42 bought at 87 on Tuesday evening, nothing on Wednesday, then a buyer's 301 at 87 at 11:11 a.m. on Thursday, October 22, in fills of 200 and 100, the window's largest trade, with the bid at 87 and the ask at 88 by the end of that hour. Thursday afternoon 79 were sold into the new 87 bid, at 6:13 p.m. a buyer paid 89 for 22 contracts, the price Brooks printed on August 29 and his first print above 87 since, and at 11:43 p.m. 100 were sold at 87, his last trade. His bid closed at 86 and his ask at 87 every day from Saturday through Wednesday; Thursday closed 87 bid and 89 ask, and the ask came back to 88 overnight. Open interest rose by about 340 contracts, to 77,885. He was 87 bid and 88 ask at the October 23 stamp, a cent higher on each side than October 17, and the gap to the national board's bid was 4.3 cents.

Mackenzie's buyers paid 15 this time, and the quote came down anyway. Takers bought about 1,720 contracts of him in the window and sold 24, and about 1,440 of the buying was at 15, a cent above the October 17 ask. One buyer took 1,138 contracts in a single second at 8:42 p.m. on Sunday, October 18, 1,064 of them at 15, in one fill of 959 and a handful of smaller ones, after taking the 73 that were offered at 14; the same shape repeated at 10:11 p.m. on Sunday, 189 contracts, all but one at 15, and at 3:20 p.m. on Monday, October 19, 189 more, all but one at 15. Both times the hourly candles cover it, the offer at 14 was back by the next hour's close. The Sunday buying began two and a half hours after the Inquirer reported the cease-and-desist letter, and the tape cannot say whether the two are connected. His bid had slipped from 13 to 12 on Saturday afternoon with no trade, was 13 again from Monday evening to Wednesday morning, and was 12 from then to the stamp; his ask went from 14 to 13 around midday on Thursday, and the last prints are 88 bought at 13 on Thursday afternoon, 72 at 13 before dawn on Friday and 21 sold at 12 at 12:32 p.m. on Friday, October 23, his last trade. Open interest rose by about 500 contracts, to 67,938. He was 12 bid and 13 ask at the October 23 stamp, a cent lower on each side than October 17, and the gap between the two bids was 75 cents.

A chamber contract added 1.2 cents in a week with no national headline this page can pin it to, and the 1.06 million contracts of new open interest on 1.85 million traded say that was money arriving, not changing hands. Kalshi's House control contract printed 92.2 twice in the window, above the 92 this page recorded on October 3. It was 90.1 bid and 90.2 ask for Democrats at the October 17 stamp and sat within a tenth of there through Monday. At 7:47 a.m. on Tuesday, October 20, a buyer took 142,704 contracts at 90.2 in 21 fills, the largest 50,000, 45,145 and 34,704, and the bid followed to 90.2; it climbed a tenth or two at a time through Tuesday, to 90.7 bid by 6 p.m., and through Wednesday, October 21, to 91.3 bid and 91.4 ask by 9 p.m., on steady buying rather than any one order; Wednesday's two largest single-second prints were sellers, 20,440 at 90.8 and 20,000 at 91.3. The size came after midnight. In the three hours after midnight on Thursday, October 22, buyers took about 248,000 contracts against 69,000 sold, most of it in two one-second buys of 102,269 at 91.6 and 91.8 and 107,593 at 91.8, 91.9 and 92.0, 73,943 of the second in one fill, plus 24,669 at 91.7 in between; the contract printed 92.2 in the hour after, and two sales at 2:43 a.m., 29,110 at 91.9 and 15,770 at 91.3, had the quote back to 91.3 bid and 91.4 ask by 3 a.m. A seller's 32,632 at 91.0 at 1:41 p.m. on Thursday was the window's low print; a buyer's 55,100 at 91.9 and 20,324 at 92.0 at 6:35 p.m. printed 92.2 again and left the bid at 91.7 at the end of that hour, and by 8 p.m. the quote was 91.4 bid and 91.5 ask. The last print of size was 21,751 bought at 91.4 at 2:36 p.m. on Friday; open interest went from 13.47 million to 14.53 million. It was 91.3 bid and 91.4 ask at the October 23 stamp, 1.2 cents above October 17, and the gap to Brooks's bid was 4.3 cents, having been 4.0 at the October 14 stamp and 4.1 at the October 17 stamp: his bid moved a cent for the national board's 1.2, so Thursday's cent was the country's, with the district a shade behind it for the second update running.

The district news in that window was the debate that did not happen, and the price did not move on it. On Sunday, October 18, Brooks's lawyer, James C. Lamb, sent the Mackenzie campaign a cease-and-desist letter over a 30-second television ad from the campaign and the National Republican Congressional Committee, titled "Criminal Offense," which says Brooks "violated state law" by not carrying workers' compensation insurance at his lawn-care business; the letter says the business had no employees besides Brooks from two months before the policy lapsed in November 2017, which would have made it a sole proprietorship that state law does not require to carry coverage, and it gave the campaign until 9:30 a.m. Monday to pull the ad. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported AdImpact's count: $580,000 behind the ad and $29 million behind every ad in the race since August; the NRCC said it would "stand by every word of this ad," and Mackenzie's campaign manager, Andres Weller, told WFMZ that "by claiming that he did not have any employees during the period in which he failed to purchase workers' compensation coverage, Bob Brooks is calling his son a liar," citing the son's LinkedIn profile. On Monday afternoon, October 19, with the deadline passed and the ad still up, Brooks pulled out of the October 21 Business Matters debate, the only one the two had agreed to; his spokesman, Benny Stanislawski, said the withdrawal came "in light of Mackenzie's failure to abide by the [cease and desist] and unending defamatory rhetoric, including a disgraceful attack just today on Bob's son," per PoliticsPA, and Weller's answer, per Lehigh Valley Public Media, was: "Just as he's tried to run out the clock on his debts in court, he's trying to run out the clock on voters." The ads also accuse Brooks of lying on a COVID-19 grant application, which Mackenzie repeated to City & State on Thursday: "We have not seen him answer that question anywhere." Brooks offered a 30-minute interview with the host, Tony Iannelli, instead; the station canceled the taping, Iannelli called it "the one and only ... So that's an opportunity missed," and Mackenzie told City & State Pennsylvania on Tuesday, "I think this was strategically planned by the Brooks campaign that they were never going to debate." WFMZ ran separate sit-down interviews in place of the debate, Mackenzie's posted Wednesday, October 21, and Brooks's on Thursday, October 22, so the October 26 broadcast this page had down as the next test is gone. The Brooks contract's prints in the hours after the withdrawal were 51 contracts bought at 87 and 34 sold into the 86 bid that night, and his bid did not move until Thursday, when the national board had already added a cent; the Mackenzie buying at 15 came on Sunday night and Monday afternoon, around the letter and the withdrawal, and amounted to about 1,440 contracts. No new poll had been published since Franklin & Marshall's on September 24 at that stamp, and neither rating had changed since the Cook Political Report's October 9 move, which Spotlight PA's October 21 guide to the two candidates' anti-corruption positions restates. That guide also has both candidates backing a ban on members of Congress trading stocks and prediction markets, the contracts readers of this page hold on this race, and notes that Brooks's own disclosure lists dozens of individual stocks he says he has never personally traded and will divest in office; neither contract moved on it. The three days before this window, October 14 to 17, are below.

What Moved From October 14 To October 17

The 50,000-contract bid was back under him by October 17, and the price moved for neither its leaving nor its return. The wall in this page's title is a different order, the sell order at 69 that capped him on the night of September 11, and that one has not come back; what came back is the order that holds him up. At the October 14 stamp the five bids nearest the Brooks price held 2,219 contracts between them, down from 66,637 six days earlier, and this page said the 86 was a quote resting on about 2,200 contracts. At the October 17 pull those five bids held 65,480: 106 at 86, 50,165 at 85, 10,070 at 84, 89 at 83 and 5,050 at 82. That is the October 8 book's shape with the October 8 book's size, 50,000 at 85 and a 10,000-contract order a cent or two beneath it, the one difference being that the 10,000 now sits at 84 where on October 8 it sat at 83. The offer rebuilt the same way: 15,392 contracts at 87 where there were about 400, 10,549 at 88 and 50,023 at 89, so the two nearest offers held 25,941 contracts against 11,059 at the October 14 stamp. Under Mackenzie the floor at 11 was 60,800 contracts where it had been 10,631, the 12 bid was 18,225 where it had been 12,805, and the 50,554 contracts that sat offered at 15 on October 8 and were gone on October 14 were back as 60,617. The orders were pulled between October 8 and 14 and replaced between October 14 and 17, and the tape cannot say which hour either happened in; what it can say is that the resting size on both candidates left and came back while the Brooks quote, apart from one Saturday close at 85, sat at 86 bid and 87 ask through all of it. A sell order the size of the one that knocked his bid down on October 8, 10,000 at 86, would that morning have taken out the 106 at 86 and stopped against the 50,165 at 85.

What traded on him was, again, almost nothing. Brooks's contract printed eight times in three days, about 170 contracts: 11 bought at 87 at 11:19 p.m. on Wednesday, October 14, 21 at 87 on Thursday morning and one more that afternoon, six at 87 on Friday afternoon, then 100 sold into the 86 bid at 4:26 p.m. on Friday, October 16, in fills of 75 and 25, the only taker sale of the window, and 32 bought at 87 in two prints that evening, the last of them 23 contracts at 6:42 p.m., his last trade. His bid closed at 86 and his ask at 87 every day of the window, open interest rose by 96 contracts, to 77,541, and the 100 sold at 86 are the most to change hands on him in one minute since the 100 bought at 87 on October 9. He was 86 bid and 87 ask at the October 17 stamp, unchanged from October 14, and the gap to the national board's bid was still four.

Mackenzie is where the window's one trade of size went, and it did not move him either. At 12:16 p.m. ET on Friday, October 16, a buyer began lifting the offer at 13, and by 12:20 had bought about 21,500 contracts of him in a handful of fills, three of them 5,000 each, then 4,419 and 2,054, all at one price. It is the largest buy of Mackenzie on this page, more than five times the 3,860 contracts takers bought in the whole of the October 5 to 8 window, and at 13 cents, 21,500 contracts is about $2,800 for a $21,500 payout if the incumbent holds the seat, before Kalshi's fee, for whoever ends up holding them. The offer took it: his ask had dropped from 14 to 13 in the small hours of Thursday, October 15, and was still 13 when the buyer finished, with his bid at 12, where it had sat since Wednesday morning. Open interest on his contract fell by about 4,400 contracts in the hour, from 71,824 to 67,404, so at least a fifth of the trade was positions closing on both sides, a short in Mackenzie buying back against a holder getting out; the tape cannot say whether the other 17,000 were new money on the incumbent or a handoff from one holder to the next. The quote went back to 13 bid and 14 ask at 8:21 p.m. Friday, when 27 contracts bought at 14 took the last of the offer at 13; that is why his last trade reads 14 against a 13 bid, and why the board above matches the October 14 stamp to the cent after two days at 12 and 13. Thursday's four small buys at 13, 131 contracts in all, were the only other trade on him, and no taker sold a contract of Mackenzie in the window.

The national board went up a tenth of a cent and spent most of a day above it. Kalshi's House control contract was 90 bid and 90.1 ask for Democrats at the October 14 stamp. A buyer took 45,000 contracts at 90.2 at 12:24 p.m. on Wednesday, October 14, the bid followed to 90.2, and the contract printed 90.4, the window's high, before Wednesday closed at 90.2 bid and 90.3 ask. The bid slipped back to 90.1 on Thursday morning, and Thursday afternoon's size, 39,600 bought at 90.2 at 2:33 p.m. and 44,826 at 90.3 in two fills at 2:56, did not lift it: the contract finished Thursday at 90.1 bid and 90.2 ask, where it sat through the stamp; on Friday a seller's 25,000 into the 90.1 bid at 4:12 p.m. and a buyer's 30,108 at 90.2 seven minutes later cancelled out. About 533,000 contracts traded in the window, 410,000 of them taker buys, and open interest rose from 13.0 million to 13.47 million. It was 90.1 bid and 90.2 ask at the October 17 stamp, a tenth above October 14, and the gap to Brooks's bid was 4.1 cents: his bid gained nothing on the national board for the second straight update, this time on about 170 contracts against the national board's 533,000.

The district news in the window was the money number this page was waiting on, and the price did not move on it. Both campaigns filed their third-quarter reports with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday, October 15. Brooks raised $2,599,420 from July 1 to September 30, spent $2,331,688 and ended the quarter with $1,286,155 in the bank, up from $1,018,423; Mackenzie's principal committee raised $809,618, spent $1,572,668 and ended with $2,175,667, down from $2,938,717. Brooks outraised the incumbent better than three to one for the quarter and outspent him by about $760,000, and Mackenzie had about $890,000 more in the bank at the end of September, with five weeks to go; across the cycle the FEC's committee totals have Mackenzie at $5,167,023 raised and Brooks at $4,991,635, though the incumbent's committee has been filing since January 2025 and the challenger's since July 2025. Armchair Lehigh Valley went through the itemized filings on Friday, October 16: Brooks's largest line was $912,194 to LC Media for television; the Safety and Affordability PAC, formed September 1, "spent $500,000 for a TV ad attacking Brooks"; Elon Musk's America PAC put $455,337 into the race over six weeks in September and October, per the same report; and Brooks has had "$3.6 million that HMP (House Majority PAC) committed over six weeks in September and October" behind him, from the same Democratic super PAC whose sponsored poll opened this page's polling record. The quote on the Brooks contract did not change on Thursday or Friday. The Mackenzie buy came at midday Friday, the day after the filings and the day the itemized breakdown ran, and the tape cannot say whether the two are connected. City & State Pennsylvania published a Brooks interview on Friday evening in which he answered Mackenzie's ads about his legal and family history in one line: "This is from a man who can't stand on his own votes." No new poll had been published since Franklin & Marshall's on September 24, and the debate was still on the calendar for Wednesday, October 21. The six days before this window, October 8 to 14, are below.

What Moved From October 8 To October 14

The 50,000-contract bid under him came off the board that week and the price did not need it. At the October 8 stamp a resting bid at 85, 50,066 contracts deep, with 1,137 at 84, 10,074 at 83 and 5,350 at 82 beneath it, held up the Brooks contract, 66,637 contracts across the five bids nearest his price. At the October 14 stamp those five bids held 2,219 contracts between them, 126 at 86, 304 at 85, 1,117 at 84, 622 at 83 and 50 at 82; the 84 level is the only one that did not move, which reads like one account pulling the rest. The 50,000-contract bid at 11 under Mackenzie was gone with them, replaced by 10,631 at 11 and 12,805 at 12. The offer thinned the same way: the 28,330 contracts offered at 87 on October 8 were down to about 400, with 10,660 behind them at 88, 34,677 contracts on the two nearest offers then and 11,059 at the stamp. The orders were pulled, not bought through, and the tape cannot say when. That was the number the title's claim rested on at the stamp: 86 was a quote resting on about 2,200 contracts, and a sell order the size of the one that knocked his bid down on October 8, 10,000 at 86, would have cleared every bid through 82 that morning. The price did not need the wall because nobody tested it, and by October 17 the size was back, as the section above says.

What did trade was small. Brooks's contract traded about 114 contracts in six days: six sold at 86 before dawn on Friday, October 9, a buyer's 100 at 87 at 3:56 p.m. that afternoon, the day the Cook Political Report moved the seat, seven at 86 and 87 on Sunday, and one contract at 87 at 8:04 a.m. on Tuesday, October 13, his last print. His bid closed at 86 every day since Thursday except Saturday, when it closed at 85, and open interest moved by 103 contracts on the week. He was 86 bid and 87 ask at the stamp, a cent higher on the bid than the October 8 stamp and the same on the ask, and the gap to the national board was still four.

Mackenzie's buyers paid 14 again, but a fifth as many of them. Takers bought about 830 contracts of him since the stamp, against about 3,860 the week before, and sold about 120, the one lot of size a buyer's 684 at 8:25 p.m. on Friday, October 9, 561 of them at 14. The quote they left was 13 bid and 14 ask, unchanged from the October 8 stamp, but the book was not: the 13 bid was 92 contracts where it had been 11,172, the offer at 14 was 235, up from 106, and the 50,554 that sat at 15 the week before were gone. The last two prints were the same size going both ways on Tuesday night, 71 bought at 14 at 10:30 p.m. and 71 sold at 12 at 10:48, whether or not it was the same account, which the tape cannot say; that is why his last trade read 12 against a 13 bid at the stamp.

The national board put on two million contracts of open interest and ended a cent higher, on 2.5 million contracts traded. Kalshi's House control contract was 89 bid and 90.1 ask for Democrats at the October 8 stamp and had its bid back to 90 by early Thursday afternoon. It gave the cent back twice in the window, at 10 p.m. on Friday, October 9, when sellers hit the 90 bid in one second for about 56,000 contracts, and at Sunday noon, on 24,000, from the window's high of 90.4 in the last hour of Saturday night, and it stayed 89 bid through Monday, when a seller's 150,000 contracts into that bid in one second at 11:17 a.m., October 12, did not move it. Buyers took the cent back both times, about 420,000 contracts at 90 on Saturday afternoon and evening, and then, at 12:45 a.m. ET on Tuesday, October 13, a buyer took about 627,000 contracts at 90 in a single second, in fills as large as 294,222, 155,687 and 50,000; the hour's volume was 628,000, all but about 270 of it taker buys, and open interest rose 578,000 contracts in that hour, so the money was new positions rather than a handoff. It was 90 bid and 90.1 ask at the stamp, with 88,000 contracts bid at 90, 265,000 at 89 and 94,000 at 88 beneath, and open interest on the contract went from 10.9 million to 13.0 million in six days. The cent the national board added is the cent Brooks added: the gap between them was four at the October 8 stamp and four at the October 14 stamp, so his bid gained nothing on the national board that week, the first week since the September 11 drop in which that was true. The district contract's one cent came on about 114 contracts; the national board's came on 2.5 million.

The district news in the window was a rating, an ad-spending number and a court file, and the quote moved on none of them, though the window's one buy of size, 100 contracts lifted at 87, came the afternoon of the Cook change. On Friday, October 9, the Cook Political Report moved PA-7 from toss-up to leans Democratic, one of 18 House ratings it moved toward Democrats that day and one of three in Pennsylvania, with PA-10 and PA-1; its House analyst, Erin Covey, wrote that Democrats "only need to win 20% of the Toss Ups to get to a majority," and its ratings page listed this seat, at the October 14 stamp, among 12 leans-Democratic races and 21 toss-ups, down from 22. That is the second rating change in ten days to arrive after the price: Brooks had been 85 or 86 bid since Monday, October 5, and had printed 87 three days before it. The Speaker's visit this page should have carried at the October 8 stamp came three days before the rating: the Washington Examiner reported that Mike Johnson, at a Fraternal Order of Police lodge in the Lehigh Valley with Mackenzie on Tuesday, October 6, his seventh trip of the cycle for him, called it "a top three race in America right now." The Philadelphia Inquirer's Friday piece on the visit put the general-election ad spending booked in the district at $27.8 million, $17.1 million of it Republican and $10.5 million Democratic, more than twice the outlay in the 1st District. And at 11:16 p.m. ET on Tuesday, October 13, Breitbart published the court filings from the Wiley promissory-note case this page covered when it settled on September 12: Brooks's October 2018 answer, in which he denied that the signature on the note was his, the notary's testimony at the August 2020 trial that she would not have notarized the signatures unless they were signed in her presence, and the $130,386 judgment the Northampton County court entered for Wiley in September 2020. None of it was new to the record; Lehigh Valley Public Media reported the forgery claim, the notary's testimony and the judgment on April 6, and the case settled a month ago. Brooks's spokesman, Benny Stanislawski, told Breitbart that "Bob has spoken openly about facing foreclosure and financial hardship throughout his life." Neither contract traded between its posting and the October 14 stamp, more than seven hours later. The quarterly filings due Thursday, October 15, are covered above. The three days before this window, October 5 to 8, are below.

What Moved From October 5 To October 8

His ask and his last print each went up a cent that week and his bid round-tripped, while the national board came down two and a half, which was the September 22 pattern with the national board leaning against him. Brooks printed 87 for the first time since the September 11 drop at 10:47 p.m. ET on Tuesday, October 6, when a buyer took 500 contracts, two at 86 and the rest at 87; it was his highest print since the 89 of August 29. His bid moved up to 86 behind it and held there through Wednesday. Then, at 12:57 a.m. on Thursday, October 8, someone sold 10,000 contracts into that bid at 86 in a single order, 13 percent of everything open on the contract and more than three times what had traded on his contract from September 23 through October 7 combined and the busiest day on it since September 22. The bid gave back the cent and nothing more. Open interest did not change on the trade, so the 10,000 contracts were a handoff between a position closing and a position opening rather than new money on either side, and the resting bid at 85, about 50,000 contracts deep on Monday, was 50,066 deep at the October 8 pull, with another 10,000 at 83 and 5,350 at 82 beneath it. The only prints between the sale and that stamp were two small ones at 87 on Thursday morning. He was 85 bid and 87 ask, a two-cent book where Monday's was one, and the gap to the national board, six and a half cents on Monday, was four.

Every buyer of Mackenzie that week paid 14 or 15, and the offer still came down. Takers bought about 3,860 contracts of him between Monday night and Wednesday night, the largest fill 1,500 at 14 on Tuesday morning and the rest in lots of a few hundred, and the book they bought into was 13 bid and 14 ask at the October 8 stamp, a cent lower on the ask than Monday's, with a 50,000-contract bid at 11 as the floor under him. The last print before that stamp, two contracts on Thursday morning, was 13.

The national board is where that week's size went. Kalshi's House control contract was 91.5 bid for Democrats at Monday's stamp. It eased to 91.1 on Tuesday afternoon, 90.9 overnight and 90.4 last, 90.3 bid, by late Wednesday morning, and then in the half hour from 2:00 to 2:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, October 7, sellers hit the bid for about 134,000 contracts, in fills as large as 24,129, 20,871 and 20,000, and took the price from 90.3 to 90 and the bid to 89. It sat at 89 bid and 90 ask through the October 8 stamp, through another 88,000 contracts in the 11 p.m. hour, almost all of them sellers hitting the bid, and 76,000 bought at 7 a.m. Thursday, and neither lot moved it. I can find no House news on Wednesday afternoon to pin the sale to; the Cook Political Report's ratings page still listed this seat among its 22 toss-ups that day, and the sale was the kind of size that moves a market with 10.9 million contracts open by a cent, not a view of this district. The district contract went the other way through all of it: its 87 print came Tuesday night, with the national board already four tenths of a cent under Monday's bid, and its bid held 86 through Wednesday's sale and gave the cent back only to the 10,000-contract order after midnight.

The district news in the window was advertising and an interview, not a poll or a filing. PoliticsPA reported on Tuesday morning, October 6, that Brooks's campaign had put up a new spot about his years as a foster father, told by a woman named Courtney, who says she was "abandoned by my mom at an office building when I was 2" and has since fostered 25 children herself, part of what the outlet described as a seven-figure buy on broadcast and digital. The same day, Reproductive Freedom for All announced a second digital ad in the district, "No Exceptions," with more than $211,000 behind it, on Mackenzie's abortion votes. And Mackenzie, asked by CNN's Manu Raju on Tuesday about the president's pleas for voters to pretend he is on the ballot, said: "we need Republicans to see that he is going to be on the ballot in the sense that his policies and his agenda are going to be on the ballot." The price's one move of size, the 10,000 sold at 86, came after midnight Thursday, two days after all three. The three days before that window, October 2 to 5, are below.

What Moved From October 2 To October 5

Nothing happened in the district over the weekend of October 3, and the price moved anyway, by a cent, up. Brooks traded at 86 on Sunday evening, October 4, his highest print since the September 11 drop, and again on Monday morning. His bid followed on Monday afternoon, from 84 to 85, when a resting bid at 85, about 50,000 contracts deep, appeared under him. The sell order this page's title is about sat a cent above him at 69 and capped his price for a night; the big order on the board at that stamp sat a cent below his ask and held it up. Mackenzie went from 15 bid to 13 over the same days, with only two small prints in between, at 14 and 15, and no trade at 13. The House control contract went to 92 on Saturday morning and was back to 91.5 by Monday, so the cent came against a flat national board, the way the three cents of September 22 did.

No new district news landed in those three days. The one thing that changed on this page was a rating it should have carried on October 2: on Tuesday, September 29, Sabato's Crystal Ball moved the seat from toss-up to leans Democratic, one of 11 House ratings it moved toward Democrats that day; The Hill's write-up, via Yahoo, noted that Brooks had outraised the incumbent and campaigned with Shapiro. The Cook Political Report had it a toss-up then, and would not move it until October 9. The price did not move on it: Brooks did not trade that Tuesday and printed 83 and 84 the next day, which is the pattern of the whole month, the news arriving after the price. On Monday, October 5, Armchair Lehigh Valley published its two candidate profiles, Brooks's built on his having lived in public housing and relied on food stamps and his line that Mackenzie "cast the deciding vote on the god-awful One Big Beautiful Bill," Mackenzie's on his record of results and, on the president, one line: "I support him when I agree with him." Neither carries a new poll or a new money number.

What Moved From September 16 To October 2

Brooks finished the round trip, then kept going, and the poll that was supposed to test the price arrived after the price had already moved. He was 74 bid at this page's September 16 stamp, on Wednesday morning. That night he went from 76 to 78 in the last hour before midnight, on the same Wednesday that Kalshi's House control contract climbed from 86 to 89, and he spent the next five days between 78 and 81. Then, in the hour after 3 p.m. on Tuesday, September 22, a large new position was opened on his contract and the price went from 80 to 83 in a single hour. He gave two cents back late that night, held 82 and 83 the rest of that week, printed 84 on Friday night, September 25, and again at midday on Wednesday, September 30, and was 84 bid at the October 2 stamp, then his highest bid since the drop. Mackenzie went the other way: 25 bid on September 16, trades at 22 that night and 19 by Saturday the 19th, 17 on the Tuesday of the Brooks jump, 16 bid by the end of that week, prints at 14 on Thursday and Friday afternoons, October 1 and 2, and 15 bid at the October 2 stamp.

The poll came out on Thursday, September 24. Nothing I can find in the district's news explains why Tuesday afternoon was the moment for the move that preceded it: no rating change, no court ruling, no new filing. What the price did with the poll itself is the more useful fact. Brooks 45, Mackenzie 40, 16 percent undecided, is a five-point lead with a sixth of the district still to decide, and the contract did not react on release day; it traded 82 to 83 that Thursday and printed 84 on Friday night. A number that would have been news to a 68-cent market on the night of September 11 was already inside what an 83-cent market believed. The buyer at 83 on Tuesday and the poll on Thursday said the same thing, and the market has treated the poll as confirmation rather than information. The days after were quiet: prints at 84 on the Friday night and Saturday after the release, one at 83 on Monday, a handful at 83 and 84 at midday Wednesday, September 30, nothing on his contract through October 2. A price that moved 11 cents in a night had traded one cent higher since release day, and never below 83. The new readings of the district in that week were the Sabato rating change of September 29, covered above, which this page missed at the time, and Spotlight PA's September 30 guide to where the two stand on the economy, which counted the race as one of Cook's three Pennsylvania toss-ups at the time. The guide is a map of positions rather than news, and the price did not need either.

The ballot is set, for now. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed on Thursday, September 17, the ruling that removed Andrew Tupone, who had filed as a Green Party candidate without the party's endorsement, from the November ballot, Armchair Lehigh Valley reported; Commonwealth Court Judge Stella Tsai had ruled for the Green Party of Pennsylvania on September 4. Tupone said he would "continue to pursue every legal avenue available to me," including asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. The outlet's own line is the one that matters for the price: "A Green candidate's presence on the ballot would typically be expected to draw votes from Democrats." The Brooks campaign claimed Republicans had recruited Tupone as a fake Green candidate, and spokesperson Benny Stanislawski said "two courts saw right through them"; Mackenzie communications director Arnaud Armstrong said Brooks and his allies had "dedicated the last month to trying to kick a candidate off the ballot." It is a two-way race, and the ruling landed the day after the Wednesday-night jump, not before it.

The first part of the trip is the one the title is about. He was 79 through Thursday, September 10; a burst of selling after midnight Friday, with nothing behind it in the district, took him to 68; a single large order to sell at 69 sat a cent above the bid late that night, capped him while it stood, and was pulled in the small hours of Saturday rather than bought through; and he was back to 74 by Monday night. Mackenzie eased from 33 to 28 over the same days. The one candidate story in that window, Armchair Lehigh Valley's September 12 report that Brooks had settled the collection fight over a 2008 promissory note for $55,000 that a court had ruled in 2020 he owed his former mother-in-law, Carol Wiley, arrived while the price sat between 68 and 72, and the price did not move on it; Brooks's attorney called it "an agreement between the two parties," and Mackenzie's campaign said Brooks "only paid back the money he stole after Congressman Mackenzie called him out for his disgraceful behavior," which is the incumbent's word, not the court's.

Read together, the three weeks say the September 11 drop was a position, not information. None of the three moves came on news in the district; the news, when it came, confirmed the price rather than changing it. An 87-cent contract is roughly seven chances in eight, above the 75-to-85 range where Brooks closed every day from August 30 through September 10, and above the 79 the September 11 sellers sold into.

What An 87-Cent Bid Is Pricing That The Polls Are Not

At 87 cents Brooks is roughly a seven-in-eight favorite, which is above what a four-point lead in a sponsored poll and two five-point leads, one with 16 percent undecided and one inside its margin of error, support on their own, and the premium has two sources. One is the national House board, which has Democrats at 90 cents to take the chamber. The other is an incumbent who won by one point and has spent the year tying himself to a president 59 percent of the district's likely voters disapproved of in the newest poll, and whose job performance only one in four rated excellent or good in Franklin & Marshall's September sample. That is why 87 and not 68.

Why 87 and not 92 is the other half. When Brooks was 79 before the drop, on September 10, Democrats were 85 bid to take the House. The national board has gained five cents since and Brooks has gained eight. The gap between the district and the national board, 17 points on the night of the drop, is down to three and a third, narrower than the six it was on September 10. Two things the polls cannot settle are the likeliest places to look for what is left. First, turnout. Republican registration is up more than 8 percent since 2022 in a district decided by 4,062 votes; Franklin & Marshall weighted its sample by party registration, but a registered-voter poll cannot say which of those new registrants will vote, and the college did not report a likely-voter figure because the sample was too small to support one. That is the one gap between the polling and this district that the September 11 seller could have been betting on. Second, the money now going on air. The third-quarter filings put the two campaigns' own spending at $2.3 million for Brooks and $1.6 million for Mackenzie from July through September; Brooks put more than $89,000 on Philadelphia's WPVI in the week of September 7, per PoliticsPA, and Mackenzie's campaign is on air with ads about Brooks's legal and family history, per City & State's October 16 report; the PACs Armchair Lehigh Valley itemized from the filings include $3.6 million committed by House Majority PAC for Brooks, $500,000 from the Safety and Affordability PAC for an ad against him and $455,337 from America PAC, while the Inquirer's October 9 count of everything booked in the district, $17.1 million Republican to $10.5 million Democratic, still has the incumbent's side ahead on air. A district where 16 percent of voters told Franklin & Marshall they had not decided is exactly the kind of seat where late spending can close a gap. Yost's line about the undecideds is the district's discount to the national board, stated in words.

My read is that 87 is fair, and the polls are the reason it is not higher rather than a reason it should be lower. Three polls with Brooks ahead, two of them independent, two ratings that now lean his way, and a national board at 90 are what an 87-cent favorite looks like; a five-point lead inside a 5.7-to-5.8-point margin of error and a Republican registration gain of 8 percent are what keep it from the national board's 90. The one fact only this page has is the order of events: the market went to 83 on a Tuesday, did not move when the poll came out on the Thursday, and has added four cents to its bid and six to its highest print in the month since, with both rating changes and the lost debate arriving after the fact, and a third poll, on Sunday, October 25, saying five points again to a market already at 87.

The arithmetic a reader can run for themselves: at 88 cents, $100 on Brooks pays $114 if a Democrat wins the seat and nothing if not, before Kalshi's fee. At 13 cents, $100 on Mackenzie pays $769 on the same terms. The gap between the two bids narrowed to 35 points on the night of September 11, was 49 on September 16 and is 75 now.

What Moves This Price From Here

One dated event remains, Election Day; the other two on this page's calendar have come and gone, one of them without happening. The quarterly filings with the Federal Election Commission came in on Thursday, October 15, the first money numbers since June 30 and the first full post-primary quarter of both campaigns' fundraising, and they are covered above: Brooks raised three times what the incumbent did, and the incumbent still has about $890,000 more in the bank; outside spending shows up separately, in the PACs' own filings, as it happens. The debate is off: Brooks withdrew on October 19 over the workers' compensation ad, WFMZ canceled the October 21 taping, and the two sit-down interviews the station ran in its place are covered above. Election Day is November 3, and the contract is eligible for early settlement once a consensus of media organizations projects the winner; a contested count is what would keep it open toward the January swearing-in.

The thing that was not on the calendar has now happened. The first independent poll was the test this page said would decide what the September 11 sellers were, and it came back Brooks up five: money disagreeing with a price, not a seller who saw something first. What was left to learn was which way the 16 percent who told Franklin & Marshall they had not decided would break, and the next poll has now said: the Times, Inquirer and Siena survey released on October 25 found Brooks up five among likely voters, in a survey that put undecideds between 3 and 6 percent across the four districts it polled, the same margin as September from a likely-voter sample rather than a registered-voter one. The filings, the debate fight and now a second independent poll have come and gone without moving the quote, and with the broadcast off the calendar the only test left of the 87, a price that was 83 before the first independent poll and has climbed since, is the count on November 3.

More on this: Why David Brock Smith (R) Will Win the Oregon Senate Race · Why Abdul El-Sayed (D) Will Win the Michigan Senate Race · Why James Talarico (D) Will Win the Texas Senate Race · Why Kurt Alme (R) Will Win the Montana Senate Race · Who Will Win the House in 2026? Where the Big Money Went

Prices refresh on this page as the race moves; the as-of stamp above the board is the evidence.