What are the PA-7 House odds now? As of 6:55 a.m. ET on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, Democrat Bob Brooks is 86 cents bid and 87 cents ask on Kalshi to win Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District, roughly six chances in seven. Republican incumbent Ryan Mackenzie is 13 bid, 14 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 seven cents higher. The single sell order at 69 that capped his price that night is long gone, and the 50,000-contract bid at 85 that held him up last week is off the board too. His last trade, on Tuesday morning, October 13, was 87 on a single contract, his highest print since the end of August. The candidates, the two polls the price rests on, and what 86 cents says about Brooks's chances are below.
This is a race the market rates as more settled than the polling does. The two public polls have Brooks up four and up five, the newer one with 16 percent of voters undecided, 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 86-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 seven cents higher still, and the first independent poll 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 two polls against the price and the market's read is clear. A four-point lead in a sponsored poll and a five-point lead with a sixth of the sample undecided, 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 86, 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 86 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 is that mail ballots typically reach Pennsylvania voters in mid-October, so the one debate will air after many of them are already in.
The record in one linean 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 8.
| Contract | Party | Bid | Ask | Where it stood at the October 8 stamp |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PA-7: Bob Brooks | D | 86¢ | 87¢ | 85/87¢, last trade 87. |
| PA-7: Ryan Mackenzie | R | 13¢ | 14¢ | 13/14¢, last trade 13. |
| House Control: Democrats | D | 90¢ | 90.1¢ | 89/90.1¢, last trade 89. |
Kalshi, as of October 14, 2026, 6:55 a.m. ET. Last trades: Brooks 87 at 8:04 a.m. on Tuesday, October 13, a one-contract print; Mackenzie 12 on Tuesday night, 71 contracts sold into the bid; House control 90.1, the quote 90 bid and 90.1 ask. "Where it stood" is the same board at 10:40 a.m. ET on October 8, this page's previous stamp; 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, having taken back this week one of the two and a half cents it gave up in the week before; Brooks is up 12, to 86 bid, and his last print of 87 is the highest since the end of August. 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 this week, on about 114 contracts of trade, came with a cent on the national board and was the country's.
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What Moved Since October 8
The 50,000-contract bid under him came off the board 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 this pull those five bids hold 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 is 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 last week are down to about 400, with 10,660 behind them at 88, 34,677 contracts on the two nearest offers then and 11,059 now. The orders were pulled, not bought through, and the tape cannot say when. That is the number the title's claim now rests on: 86 is 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 clear every bid through 82 today. The price did not need the wall because nobody tested it.
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 is 86 bid and 87 ask, a cent higher on the bid than the October 8 stamp and the same on the ask, and the gap to the national board is 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 is 13 bid and 14 ask, unchanged from the October 8 stamp, but the book is not: the 13 bid is 92 contracts where it was 11,172, the offer at 14 is 235, up from 106, and the 50,554 that sat at 15 last week are 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 reads 12 against a 13 bid.
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 has been 90 bid and 90.1 ask since, 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 is four now, so his bid gained nothing on the national board this week, the first week since the September 11 drop in which that is 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 now lists this seat 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 has traded since it posted, more than seven hours before this pull. The next money number is the quarterly filing due Thursday, October 15. 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 86-cent contract is roughly six chances in seven, 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.
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What An 86-Cent Bid Is Pricing That The Polls Are Not
At 86 cents Brooks is roughly a six-in-seven favorite, which is above what a four-point lead in a sponsored poll and a five-point lead with 16 percent undecided 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 whose job performance one in four voters in the district now rate excellent or good. That is why 86 and not 68.
Why 86 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 seven. The gap between the district and the national board, 17 points on the night of the drop, is down to four, 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. Brooks put more than $89,000 on Philadelphia's WPVI in the week of September 7, per PoliticsPA, which also reported that Mackenzie planned to start on WPVI at the end of September, a start no outlet has yet confirmed, and 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 86 is fair, and the polls are the reason it is not higher rather than a reason it should be lower. Two polls with Brooks ahead, one of them independent, two ratings that now lean his way, and a national board at 90 are what an 86-cent favorite looks like; 16 percent undecided in a registered-voter sample and a Republican registration gain of 8 percent are what keep it from 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 three cents to its bid and four to its last print in the three weeks since, with both rating changes arriving after the fact.
The arithmetic a reader can run for themselves: at 87 cents, $100 on Brooks pays $115 if a Democrat wins the seat and nothing if not, before Kalshi's fee. At 14 cents, $100 on Mackenzie pays $714 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 73 now.
What Moves This Price From Here
Three dated events remain. The next quarterly filings with the Federal Election Commission, due Thursday, October 15, the day after this stamp, are the first money numbers since June 30 and the first full post-primary quarter of both campaigns' fundraising; outside spending shows up separately, in the PACs' own filings, as it happens. The debate is recorded October 21 and airs October 26 in two half-hour segments. 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 is left to learn is which way the 16 percent who told Franklin & Marshall they had not decided will break, and the next poll, not the last one, will say. Until it does, the undecided get their first real tests in the mid-October filings and the October 26 broadcast, and so does the 86, a price that was 83 before the poll and has climbed since without a new poll, and without moving on the news that did land.
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Prices refresh on this page as the race moves; the as-of stamp above the board is the evidence.
