What are the PA-7 House odds after Friday morning's move? As of 11:53 p.m. ET on Friday, September 11, 2026, Kalshi prices Democrat Bob Brooks to win Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District at 68 cents bid, 69 cents ask. The last trade before the move, on Thursday morning, was 79. Republican incumbent Ryan Mackenzie is 33 bid, 34 ask, up from 22. A contract pays $1 if that party's candidate is sworn in for the seat in January 2027, so the bid and ask are the market's running estimate of each side's chance, in cents. The whole move happened in the hour after midnight, on more contracts than the Brooks side had traded in the previous five days combined, and a standing offer to sell 50,106 more Brooks contracts at 69 cents has capped the price ever since.
The only public poll of the race is 10 weeks old and has Brooks ahead by four. The Kalshi contract on which party controls the House did not move a penny. Thursday's one piece of district news was Mackenzie's speech at the Republican convention in Dallas, covered below, and nothing else happened that a price should react to. Yet roughly 25,000 contracts crossed the Brooks side of the book in the dead of night, a few hundred more knocked the price down 11 cents, and by Friday morning the market had gone from calling Brooks a four-in-five favorite to calling him a two-in-three favorite. What follows is what traded and when, the district the price is trying to read, the record both campaigns are running on, and what a 68-cent bid is pricing that the polling is not.
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What Traded In The Midnight Hour
Kalshi publishes hourly summaries of each contract's trading (traders call them candles), and they tell the story more clearly than the daily totals do. Through Thursday the Brooks contract sat at 79 cents on a quiet book, meaning few standing orders on either side. The last trade of any size before the move was 110 contracts at 79, between 9 and 10 a.m. ET. Open interest, the count of contracts that exist and have not been closed out, stood at about 39,500.
Between midnight and 1 a.m. ET on Friday, 25,543 contracts traded on the Brooks side. The average price across that hour was 78.9 cents, so nearly the entire block crossed at 79, the same price the contract had carried all week. Open interest rose by roughly 24,900 in the same hour, to about 64,400, which means the block was new positions on both sides rather than existing holders passing contracts to each other. A 25,000-contract block at one price, with open interest rising to match, is negotiated size: a large buyer of "no" on Brooks met a large seller of "yes," and they did it at the going rate.
The price damage came afterward, on almost nothing. The last few hundred contracts of that hour carried the trade down to 73, and in the following hour 196 contracts took it to a low of 65 before it closed at 68. The quote stood at 65 bid, 68 ask. A book that thin at 1 a.m. has few standing offers to buy, so a small amount of selling gaps the price. By morning the firms quoting both sides had brought the spread back in to 67 bid, 68 ask, and it held there through the afternoon on roughly 180 contracts. A 1,052-contract trade between 6 and 7 p.m. ticked it to 70 before the quote settled at 68 and 69.
Then there is the offer. At the 11:53 p.m. stamp, the Brooks book shows 250 contracts bid at 68 and 50,106 contracts offered at 69. Someone is willing to sell 50,000 more Brooks contracts at 69 cents, which is either a bet against Brooks at that price or a large holder cashing out, and the tape cannot say which. Either way the effect is the same: until that offer is filled or pulled, the price cannot get back above 69, however the news breaks. The tiny bid against it says nobody is in a hurry to take the other side.
The Mackenzie side barely traded. His contract did 155 contracts in the midnight hour and closed it at 24 cents. In the next hour, 624 contracts traded, ticking as high as 37 before the hour closed at 32. One 47-contract trade at 33 between 8 and 9 a.m. is the only print since. His price rose because the firms quoting both sides re-quoted it to match the Brooks side. If you see the move framed as Mackenzie's odds jumping 50 percent, the action was on the Brooks leg, and the Mackenzie leg simply followed. The two asks now sum to 103 cents, a normal three-cent gap above the $1 payout that those firms keep as their margin, so neither leg is stale.
Friday was also the fourth time in two weeks that size showed up in this book, and the earlier blocks are the context for the midnight hour. On September 3 the Brooks side traded 50,218 contracts in a single day. The average price was 82 cents, the day's high, and open interest more than quadrupled, from about 15,000 to about 65,000. On September 5 another 25,922 contracts traded at an average of 79 and open interest fell by about 25,900, to about 39,000: positions being closed. On September 6 the Mackenzie side had its own 36,267-contract day at an average of 27 cents, spiking as high as 31 before closing at 21, with open interest rising by about 35,900. Each block crossed at one price with open interest moving in step, which is the signature of a large account building and adjusting a position in negotiated size rather than chasing the market. My read is that the same kind of participant was at work on Friday, and the difference this time was the hour: the block itself did not move the price, but the few hundred contracts that followed met an empty 1 a.m. book, and the 50,000-contract offer at 69 has kept the new level in place.
The Race The Price Is Trying To Read
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. Its 2024 House result was one of the closest in the country: Mackenzie, then a state representative, unseated three-term Democrat Susan Wild by about 4,000 votes. The Philadelphia Inquirer ranks that one-point margin as the seventh smallest of the 435 House races that year. The Cook Political Report rates the 2026 race a toss-up.
Brooks won the Democratic nomination on May 19 in a four-way primary with about 42 percent of the vote, per City & State Pennsylvania. Lamont McClure and Ryan Crosswell each took about 21 percent, and Carol Obando-Derstine about 17. 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, in a district where the presidential recall in the one public poll ran 47 for Trump and 46 for Harris. 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 midnight block on Kalshi landed later that night. Nothing on the tape says the two are connected, and this page does not claim they are; the timing is simply the timing.
The Poll The Market Stopped Believing
There has been 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, it is 10 weeks old, and it is the entire public polling record.
Read against the price history, Friday looks less like a shock and more like a correction. A four-point lead in a sponsored poll, in a district decided by one point two years ago, does not by itself justify a 79-cent price, which is what the market had been paying for Brooks through most of the last two weeks. The contract traded as high as 89 cents on August 29 and closed at 85 the next day. Through the first ten days of September it ranged between 72 and 83. A 68-cent contract is a two-in-three favorite, which is closer to what a small lead in one partisan poll supports than 79 ever was. One reasonable reading of Friday morning is that the sellers were disagreeing with a price rather than reacting to news.
The other reading is that whoever sold knows something the rest of the book does not, and there is no way to tell the two apart from the tape alone. What the tape does say is that nobody stepped in front of the selling, and that the big offer described above is now resting a cent above the last trade. A price that gaps with no bounce, then meets a wall, is a book that was not deeply committed to the old level in the first place.
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. What I find most useful about it is that every item below landed while the contract was trading higher than it is now, so none of it explains Friday.
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 printed its high of 89 cents.
The same day, 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. The contract was seven weeks past that story when it hit 89. 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 set up as much as $880 billion in Medicaid and Medicare 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 public availability 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. 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, taped 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." Mail ballots in Pennsylvania typically reach voters in mid-October, so the one debate will air after many of them are already in. The contract closed at 83 on September 7 and 80 on September 8, the day that exchange was published.
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 vote with a year of protests behind it. Every item was public, and priced, before Friday.
The Board
| Contract | Party | Bid | Ask | Last trade before the move | Open interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PA-7: Brooks | Democrat | 68¢ | 69¢ | 79¢ | 65,216 |
| PA-7: Mackenzie | Republican | 33¢ | 34¢ | 22¢ | 48,839 |
| House: Democrats | Control board | 85¢ | 86¢ | 86¢ | (control board) |
Kalshi, as of September 11, 2026, 11:53 p.m. ET. "Before the move" is the last trade on each PA-7 leg before the midnight hour on September 11; for the House control row it is the prior day's close. Open interest is the number of contracts outstanding on that leg. These are market prices and model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice; this page gets a results edition on the same URL when the seat settles.
The House control row is the one that decides what kind of move this was. The control contract sits at 86 cents for Democrats, unchanged on the day, on the same exchange. If Friday's selling had been about the national environment, the control board would have flinched with it. It did not, which points to whoever sold Brooks making a call about this district and these two candidates rather than about November.
More live boards from the same panel: who will win the House in 2026, Democrats 86¢ on Kalshi's control contract · the 2026 Senate election odds board, where the Senate control contract is 52¢ Republican · the TX-15 House board, the other House toss-up on the board, Bobby Pulido 57¢ · every open board on the prediction markets hub.
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What A 68-Cent Bid Is Pricing That The Poll Is Not
Start with what the bid agrees with. At 68 cents Brooks is still the favorite, and the reasons are the ones the July poll captured: a national House board that has Democrats at 86 cents to take the chamber, an incumbent who won by one point and has spent the year tying himself to a president whose favorability in the district polled underwater, and a challenger with a firefighter's biography and a unified party behind him. A market that thought Mackenzie was the better bet would not leave Brooks at 68.
Now what the bid is pricing that a 47-to-43 poll does not. First, the registration shift: a Republican gain of more than 8 percent since 2022 in a district decided by 4,000 votes is a structural change the July poll's sample may or may not reflect, and there has been no public poll since to check. Second, the calendar. The only debate airs October 26, after mail ballots are out, so there is no scheduled event before then that would produce the kind of viral moment that repriced other races this cycle. Third, the money. Legis1 counted more than $2.2 million in outside spending in the Democratic primary in May alone, most of it attacking Brooks and Crosswell, and the general will draw both parties' committees on top of that; a district whose voters recalled backing Trump by a point in that same poll is exactly the kind of seat where late spending can close a gap, and the price is discounting Brooks for that possibility without any poll telling it to.
And fourth, the thing a poll can never price: the sellers' own information. A 25,000-contract midnight block is either a well-financed disagreement with a price or a well-informed one, and the market has, so far, split the difference. It has not bounced back toward 79, and the offer described above is the plain reason why: a bid of a few hundred contracts against an offer 200 times its size is a price with a lid on it. It has not kept falling either, which says nobody else has shown up with a reason to sell below the current bid.
The arithmetic a reader can run for themselves: a buyer pays the ask, so at 69 cents a $100 position on Brooks returns about $145 if a Democrat is sworn in and nothing if not, before Kalshi's fee. At 34 cents, $100 on Mackenzie returns about $294 on the same terms. The market's implied gap between them, roughly 35 points, is about nine times the four-point poll lead. The gap measures how sure the market is of the winner rather than the expected vote margin, and on Friday morning it became a good deal less sure than it was on Thursday.
What Moves This Price From Here
Three things are on the calendar and one is not. The next quarterly filings with the Federal Election Commission, due in mid-October, will give 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 tapes October 21 and airs October 26 in two half-hour segments, so any moment that travels will travel after most mail ballots are in. Election Day is November 3. Kalshi can settle the contract early once a consensus of media organizations projects the winner, so a clear result pays within days; a contested count is what would keep it open toward the January swearing-in.
The thing that is not on the calendar is a public, non-sponsored poll. The July number is the only one a trader can cite, and the market just moved 11 cents in a night without a newer one. The first independent survey of this district will be the first real test of Friday's sellers, and it is the input this page will be rebuilt around when it lands. If it shows Brooks up four again, the midnight block was money disagreeing with a price. If it shows a tie, the sellers saw it first. Until then, a 68-cent Brooks contract reads as a market that has stopped extrapolating from one Democratic poll and started pricing a one-point district as a one-point district, with a Democratic year on its side and an incumbent who has chosen to campaign as Trump's candidate in a place that split almost evenly for president.
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The Bottom Line
The PA-7 House odds moved because a 25,000-contract block crossed at the old price in the middle of the night, a few hundred contracts behind it found an empty book, and a 50,000-contract offer then sat down on the new level. The July poll did not change, the national board did not change, and the record both campaigns are fighting over was already public and already priced. Two in three for Brooks and one in three for Mackenzie is where the book stands, on one-cent spreads and healthy open interest, in a district that was decided by 4,000 votes the last time it voted. The next number that matters is a poll nobody has commissioned yet. When it comes, this page gets rebuilt on the same URL, and the midnight hour gets its grade.
These are market prices and model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. Kalshi event contracts trade on a CFTC-regulated exchange; participation requires being 18+ and in an eligible state. Prices refresh on this page as the race moves; the as-of stamp above the board is the evidence.
