Redistricting Odds 2026: The Court That Took Missouri Off The Board

Prices as of September 3, 2026, 7:11 p.m. ET, from Kalshi's live book. The session tape quoted below runs through 6:54 p.m. ET the same day.

Missouri's contract on Kalshi's redistricting board opened Thursday at 90 cents. By the evening it was worth less than a dime. In between, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the congressional map the legislature passed last September cannot be used in November, and a market that had spent months treating that map as a finished fact unwound the position in a single session. Thursday was the day the board's own rules did the teaching: before a "redistricted" contract pays, a map has to be adopted by the legislature, survive every court with a say, and actually govern the election. Missouri had the first of those three. It turned out to have neither of the other two.

Kalshi's board asks one plain question: which states will redistrict before the 2026 midterms? It is the cleanest single place to watch the mid-decade map war get scored in real money. Below: what the court said, how the price unwound trade by trade, the second contract that collapsed the same afternoon, the full 25-state board, and what the surviving prices now say about how many new maps the midterms will actually be run on. Every one of those maps feeds the House control board, where Democrats trade at 85 cents this evening; where that price comes from is its own piece, and the panel's seat-by-seat read of the chamber lives on the 2026 midterm balance-of-power board.

This is a neutral, data-driven look at market prices and the public record; it does not advocate for any party, map or outcome. Everything on this page is market prices and model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange (18+; availability varies by state).

The Quick Answer

Seven states: Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, California, Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana, each priced at 97 cents or better, and together they are almost the whole of the 7.3 states the board's prices add up to. Missouri is the one state in the middle after Thursday's ruling, and the least obvious row is Utah, which has a new map in force for November and still trades at 4 cents because a court drew it. Why a map that governs the election cannot pay, and a map that could have paid will not govern it, is the thread below.

What The Missouri Supreme Court Actually Ruled

The map at issue is House Bill 1, passed in a special session last September. Governor Mike Kehoe signed it on September 28, 2025, and it carried an effective date of December 11, as The Missouri Times records it. Its target was the Kansas City-based 5th District held by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver. NBC News reports the new lines were drawn so that President Trump would have carried the district by more than 17 points in the last presidential vote. Cleaver won the old version of that seat by almost 24 points that same year, 2024. NBC describes Missouri as one of a handful of Republican-led states that took up mid-decade redistricting at the president's urging.

The map never got to govern an election unchallenged. A group called People Not Politicians Missouri gathered more than 300,000 signatures for a referendum petition. It submitted them on December 9, two days before the law's effective date. Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected the petition in early August, and a Cole County circuit court sided with him. On Thursday the Missouri Supreme Court reversed that ruling unanimously, St. Louis Public Radio reports. The order directs Hoskins to certify referendum petition 2026-R004 as sufficient and place it on the November 3 ballot by September 8, per The Missouri Times. The court's reasoning was that the Missouri Constitution lists the kinds of legislation exempt from referendum, and congressional redistricting is not on the list. Because the petition was filed before HB 1 took effect, the law never did. In the court's words, HB 1 "is not the law and has never been the law." The 2022 map governs the November election unless voters approve HB 1. Per NBC, the order, written by Judge Ginger Gooch, restrains Hoskins from "implementing, using, or mandating the use of" the HB 1 map for the November general election.

Attorney General Catherine Hanaway criticized the decision the same day. She called it "unprecedented," said it had "thrust our state into a full-fledged constitutional crisis," and pledged to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, per NBC. That appeal is the one live path back for the map before the midterms, and it is the reason the contract did not go all the way to zero. Thursday was also not this court's first look at HB 1. In a separate lawsuit decided in March, the same court let the map stand against a state-constitution claim, by a 4-3 vote, as Wikipedia's running redistricting summary records it. Thursday's question was a different one: whether voters get a say at all. On that the court had no dissent.

How A 90-Cent Contract Became Less Than A Dime In One Session

Through Wednesday the Missouri contract traded like a finished state. It closed the September 2 session at 89 cents on 285 contracts, a quiet day on a contract that had printed between 80 and 91 cents since August 21, nearly all of it in the high 80s. Thursday's first trades went through at 90 cents, the same neighborhood the contract had lived in for weeks.

Then the ruling landed, and the tape shows the position leaving in a hurry. The day's low print was 3.2 cents, an overshoot the market walked back within the session. The last trade before this pull was 7.7 cents. Thursday's volume was 17,606 contracts against 13,964 of open interest, so more contracts changed hands in one session than were open on the contract at the evening pull. Kalshi reports volume and open interest in dollars of contract face value, one dollar per contract, the way the exchange itself displays them, and the board below labels them that way.

The book at the pull sat 7.4 cents bid against 9.0 cents asked. The spread is wide in percentage terms, as any single-digit contract's is, but it is two-sided with a full session of volume behind it, so the new price is a real price and not one seller's footprint left in an empty book. The more interesting question is what the surviving cents are pricing, and the contract's own terms answer it.

On the contract's own wording, Missouri pays Yes only if the legislature adopted a new map before November 1, that map is not enjoined or struck down as of the November 8 expiration, and it is in effect for the first federal election after its adoption; the standing guide to how election contracts turn a price into a probability covers the rest of the mechanics. The first of those tests was met last September, when HB 1 was signed. The second and third are the ones Thursday broke: the order enjoins the use of HB 1, and it keeps the 2022 map in place for the November 3 general, the election this contract has been priced against all along, unless voters approve HB 1. The referendum falls on the same day as the election the map would need to govern. So the cents that survived are a price on two paths, one of them barely a path: a federal court restoring the HB 1 map for November before the election is held, with the state of play judged at the November 8 expiration, or a Missouri special session adopting a fresh map before November 1 that could somehow govern a vote two days later. Hanaway named the first. Nobody has proposed the second.

Alabama: The Other Contract That Fell On Thursday

Missouri was the headline, and it was still not the biggest volume on the board. Alabama's contract traded 27,103 contracts in Thursday's session, the most of any state, and finished at 1 cent. The board's 24-hour volume field reads 29,103 because that window reaches back into Wednesday's late tape. Its slide had started a day earlier. The September 2 session opened at 83 cents and closed at 62, on 4,888 contracts. Thursday opened at 60 before the tape ran to a penny.

The background is a map that already exists. This spring the U.S. Supreme Court cleared Alabama to use the congressional map its legislature enacted in 2023, which lower courts had blocked; Governor Kay Ivey set a special primary under that map for August 11, per the Alabama Reflector and the governor's office. That is a changed map for 2026 in every practical sense, and for months the contract was priced as if it counted. Kalshi's rules text for the board now carries a clarification dated September 3, 2026, addressed to Alabama: "The reinstatement and subsequent use of the congressional district map enacted in 2023, including its use in the August 2026 special primary, do not satisfy the Payout Criterion because that map was adopted before Issuance." The note adds that the contract can still pay Yes if the legislature adopts a new qualifying map before November 1.

I am not going to claim the note and the price are cause and effect. The tape carries no reasons, and the slide began a day before the note's date. The note settles the definition, and it is the same one Missouri ran into from the other side: this board counts maps a legislature adopted after the contract listed on July 29, 2025. A 2023 map that a court put back in force is old law under a new date. Missouri's was new law that never took effect. As things stand tonight, neither one is what the contract is counting.

The Board: Which States Still Redistrict Before The Midterms

Twenty-five states carry a contract on the 2026 board, one Yes/No contract each, and after Thursday they sort into three tiers: seven finished states priced as near-certain, Missouri alone in the middle, and 17 states at a nickel or less. Where a bid reads a tenth of a cent against a 4-cent ask, that is a displayed market, not a real quote; the quotes with real size on both sides are the seven at the top and Missouri. Volume is the last 24 hours; open interest is the number of contracts still open.

State	Yes price	Bid / ask	24h volume (face value)	Open interest (face value)	Where it stands
Ohio	98.4¢	97.8¢ / 98.4¢	0	7,592	Commission map adopted unanimously, October 31, 2025
Florida	98.3¢	97.8¢ / 98.3¢	0	9,556	Legislature's map signed May 4, 2026
Louisiana	98.3¢	96.0¢ / 98.3¢	0	14,275	Legislature's map enacted May 29, 2026; challenges filed
Texas	98.0¢	97.9¢ / 98.0¢	0	15,220	Map signed August 29, 2025; U.S. Supreme Court stayed the block on December 4
North Carolina	97.8¢	96.8¢ / 97.9¢	546	5,005	Legislature's map enacted October 22, 2025; federal panel allowed its use
California	97.6¢	97.7¢ / 98.0¢	294	35,789	Proposition 50 passed November 4, 2025; U.S. Supreme Court declined the appeal
Tennessee	97.0¢	97.0¢ / 98.0¢	0	2,044	Legislature's map signed May 7, 2026; ACLU suit pending
Missouri	7.7¢	7.4¢ / 9.0¢	17,606	13,964	State Supreme Court sent HB 1 to a November 3 referendum; 2022 map governs
Utah	4.0¢	2.0¢ / 4.0¢	127	25,225	Court-ordered map, November 10, 2025; a court-drawn map pays No
Washington	3.2¢	0.1¢ / 3.9¢	0	4,340	No map; Democrats lack the two-thirds a redraw needs
Illinois	3.0¢	2.0¢ / 4.0¢	0	9,633	No qualifying map adopted as of this pull
Georgia	2.9¢	1.1¢ / 3.0¢	15	16,679	No qualifying map adopted as of this pull
Virginia	2.6¢	2.6¢ / 3.8¢	0	36,030	April referendum map struck by the state Supreme Court, May 8
Wisconsin	2.5¢	2.2¢ / 5.1¢	0	5,235	Three challenges rejected; the current 6-2 map stands
Minnesota	2.5¢	1.1¢ / 3.8¢	0	2,633	No qualifying map adopted as of this pull
Maryland	2.5¢	0.4¢ / 3.6¢	0	12,350	House passed a map February 2; the Senate never voted
New Jersey	2.2¢	1.0¢ / 2.2¢	0	973	No qualifying map adopted as of this pull
Arizona	2.0¢	1.0¢ / 4.0¢	0	681	No qualifying map adopted as of this pull
Mississippi	2.0¢	2.0¢ / 3.0¢	0	3,672	No qualifying map adopted as of this pull
Nebraska	2.0¢	1.1¢ / 2.0¢	0	1,322	No qualifying map adopted as of this pull
South Carolina	1.8¢	1.1¢ / 1.8¢	16	8,973	Senate blocked the calendar extension a redraw needed
Alabama	1.0¢	0.0¢ / 3.0¢	29,103	12,070	2023 map reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court; predates the contract per Kalshi's note
Kansas	1.0¢	0.1¢ / 3.9¢	0	1,794	Redraw push stalled about 20 votes short in the House
New York	1.0¢	1.0¢ / 3.5¢	0	13,608	Court redraw blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, March 2
Indiana	0.2¢	1.0¢ / 4.0¢	0	6,764	State Senate rejected the House's map, December 11

Yes price is the last trade; bid and ask are the live book at the pull. Status notes are condensed from NBC News' running tally and Wikipedia's redistricting summary, both linked on this page; states marked as having no qualifying map adopted had no enacted map in either source at this pull, and litigation is still moving in several of the finished states. The 24-hour window runs back to Wednesday evening, which is why Alabama's cell reads 2,000 above its Thursday session count. Indiana's 0.2¢ last trade is a stale print that the count below carries at face value.

The row to read twice is Utah. The state has a new congressional map, in force for November, and by the trackers' count it adds a Democratic seat. It trades at 4 cents anyway, because a court drew that map, and the rules text Kalshi attaches to every contract on this board, identical from state to state with the name swapped, scores a court-drawn map as No. Utah is the mirror image of Missouri: a map that governs the election but cannot pay, next to a map that could have paid but will not govern the election. What the board counts is legislatures that finished the job and kept it, and a new map on its own earns no credit.

More live boards: the 2026 House control board, Democrats 85¢ · the 2026 Senate control board, Republicans 52¢ · every open verdict on the prediction markets hub.

A Worked Example: What The Surviving Prices Say About The Count

Add up every Yes price on the board and you get the market's expected number of qualifying states, because each price is roughly the chance that contract pays, and expected values add even when the outcomes move together, as these do through shared courts and one national fight. The sum is the mean count, not a claim that the 25 fights are unrelated, and its bottom end leans on stale last trades: most of the sub-nickel contracts printed nothing in the last 24 hours. At Thursday's pull the prices sum to about 7.3 states. Run the same sum with Wednesday's closes for Missouri and Alabama in place of Thursday's, and the board was carrying about 8.7. One court ruling in Missouri and one repricing in Alabama took roughly a state and a half off the midterms' map count between two closes.

Where the 7.3 sits is the part worth holding onto. The seven finished states contribute about 6.85 of it, so the board's answer to "which states are redistricting" is, to within a rounding error, the seven names at the top of the table. The other 18 states share 44 cents between them, and Missouri holds 7.7 of those. Strip Missouri out and the rest of the country is priced at about a third of one state, spread across 17 contracts where the bid sometimes reads a tenth of a cent.

The seat math moves less than the board did. NBC News' June tally put Republicans in position to gain as many as 16 House seats from the new maps against six for Democrats, and Missouri's single Republican pickup was one of those 16. With the 2022 map back in force, that ceiling reads 15. Alabama is the odd one out in the other direction: its seat stays in NBC's count, because the 2023 map does govern November; it simply is not new by this contract's definition. The House control price I mentioned up top, 85 cents for Democrats, sits downstream of all of this, and a one-seat change to the Republican ceiling is inside the noise on a page whose arithmetic runs on seats rather than on how the lines were drawn.

What Moves This Board Before The Close

• September 8. The court's deadline for Hoskins to certify the referendum for the November ballot. It is the first date on which the state's next move becomes visible, and a certification with no federal filing beside it leaves the Missouri contract holding a price with nothing underneath it.
• The Appeal Hanaway Promised. At 7.7 cents the market puts a federal court restoring HB 1 for November at something under one in ten. The precedent for speed is real: a three-judge panel blocked the Texas map on November 18, 2025, and the Supreme Court stayed that block on December 4, a 16-day turnaround recorded in the Wikipedia summary cited above. The precedent for the other outcome is real too: Virginia's emergency appeal to the same court was denied on May 15, and that contract trades at 2.6 cents.
• A New Alabama Map. Under Kalshi's note, only a map the legislature adopts before November 1 pays. A contract at 1 cent with no bid is the market saying no special session is coming; a bid appearing above a nickel would be the first tell that one is.
• Litigation In The Finished States. Tennessee trades at 97.0 cents with an ACLU challenge pending after a judge declined to block the map in May. Louisiana, with multiple suits filed, trades at 98.3. The board is charging about 3 cents for Tennessee's risk and under 2 for Louisiana's, and that gap is small enough that I read it as noise rather than a view on either courtroom.
• The Two Deadlines. Trading ends at 12:59 a.m. ET on November 1, which is the adoption cutoff, and the not-enjoined test is taken at the November 8 expiration. Missouri's map already clears the first and fails the in-effect test on November 3 unless a court restores it before the vote, which is what turns the remaining price into a bet on a court rather than on the voters.

The Contract, The Book And The Timeline

Venue	Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange (18+; availability varies by state, as of September 2026)
The Event	"Which states will redistrict before the midterms?" (Kalshi KXREDISTRICTING-26), one Yes/No contract per state, 25 states listed
The Contract	Per the Missouri rules text, verbatim: "If the Missouri legislature has adopted new, qualifying congressional district maps after Issuance and before Nov 1, 2026, then the market resolves to Yes"
Listed	July 29, 2025; maps adopted before that date do not qualify, which is the clause Kalshi's September 3 Alabama note turns on
Next Catalyst	September 8, 2026: certification deadline for the Missouri referendum
Then	Any federal-court action on the Hanaway appeal; the November 3 midterms and Missouri referendum, both after the close
Close	November 1, 2026, 12:59 a.m. ET (04:59 UTC); expiration November 8, 2026
Depth	About 2.1 million contracts of lifetime volume across the 25 contracts, roughly 265,000 still open; Virginia alone has traded 610,000 of the lifetime figure
Prices As Of	September 3, 2026, 7:11 p.m. ET (last trades, with each contract's live bid and ask on the board above)
Re-Score Policy	This page is refreshed on the same URL when a state moves, and the count above is recomputed each time

The depth row carries its own lesson. Virginia has traded 610,000 contracts on a map that a court struck in May, more than the seven finished states combined, because a referendum in April made it the board's live fight for a month. Missouri's 120,000 of lifetime volume looked settled by comparison until Thursday. On this board the volume follows the courtroom. Where these contracts sit legally is covered in our guide to prediction market legality, and the day's full slate of graded calls sits on our daily Kalshi hub.

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 Ed Markey (D) Will Win the MA Senate Primary
• Why James Talarico (D) Will Win the Texas Senate Race
• Why Scott Brown (R) Will Win the NH Senate Primary

The Bottom Line

Missouri had traded as the board's eighth finished state through Wednesday. It came off in one session because a unanimous court found that a petition filed two days before the law's effective date meant the law never took effect, and because the election the map would need to govern falls on the same day as the vote on whether it becomes law. The cents Missouri kept are a price on Hanaway's appeal, not on the voters. Alabama came off the same day, with a rules note of the same date spelling out why a 2023 map cannot count. What the question on this board has meant all along is not which states drew a map, but which legislatures drew one that stuck. The next hard date for this page is November 8, when the board expires and every one of the 25 contracts pays a dollar or zero; the re-score that follows will show whether the 7.3-state count the market carried on September 3 was right, and by how many states.

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.