Prices as of September 10, 2026, 5:52 a.m. ET, from Kalshi's live book. The price history quoted below runs through 11:54 p.m. ET on September 9. First published the evening of September 3; the September 4 edition added Friday's tape and the state court's denial of a stay; this edition adds the week that followed: a denial from Justice Kavanaugh, a federal order pointing the other way, a contempt hearing, and a Missouri contract that printed 1 cent and 64 cents inside the same hour.
Missouri's contract on Kalshi's redistricting board opened Thursday, September 3, at 90 cents. By that evening it was worth 7.7 cents, by Friday afternoon 15, and on Tuesday, September 8, it printed 1 cent and 64 cents inside the same hour before closing Wednesday night at 36. In between, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the congressional map the legislature passed last September cannot be used in November, then overruled the attorney general's request to put that ruling on hold while she takes it to Washington. A market that had spent months treating the map as a finished fact unwound the position in a single session, and then spent the next day arguing about what the leftover cents are for. September 3 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. That Thursday, it looked like it had neither of the other two. A week on, a federal judge has ordered the map used anyway, the state court has summoned the secretary of state to explain himself, and the contract is priced at 36 cents between them.
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. The tell on this page is now Tuesday, September 8: 111,276 contracts changed hands on Missouri in one session, the price touched 1 cent after one court spoke and 64 cents after another, and open interest has tripled since Friday. That session is below, hour by hour, after the Friday hour that preceded it, with what the court said and what it refused on Friday, the second contract that collapsed the same afternoon, the full 25-state board, and the two November dates that decide whether Missouri's surviving cents are a bet on voters or a bet on a court. Every one of those maps feeds the House control board, where a Democratic House summed to about 87 cents on the September 4 balance-of-power rungs; 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.
Stay ahead of the markets.
Daily insights and expert picks on Kalshi, Polymarket, and what's moving markets.
Free forever. Unsubscribe anytime.
The Quick Answer
Seven states are effectively done: Texas, Florida, Ohio and California at 97 cents or better, Tennessee and Louisiana at 96, and North Carolina back at 97.9 after recovering the 4 cents it shed last Friday. Missouri is the whole story again, and the story changed on Tuesday, September 8: Justice Brett Kavanaugh refused to stay the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling, a federal district judge ordered the HB 1 map used anyway minutes later, and the contract printed 1 cent and 64 cents inside the same hour before closing Wednesday night at 36, where Thursday's book opens 35 bid, 37 asked. The state court hears a contempt motion against Secretary of State Denny Hoskins at 10 a.m. Central on Thursday, and the referendum's backers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the federal order. On my reading of the contract those 36 cents are a price on that federal order surviving and on Kalshi scoring as Yes a map one court has enjoined and another has ordered used, not on Missouri voters, because the November 3 referendum cannot make HB 1 the map that November 3 was run on. Utah has a new map in force for November and trades at 2.1 cents, because this board pays legislatures, not courts. The full 25-state board, Tuesday's tape hour by hour, and the section that separates November 1 from November 3 are 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." Under the state court's order, the 2022 map governs the November 3 election and the referendum, held the same day, decides only whether HB 1 becomes law after that; the September 8 federal order described below points the other way. 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.
The part of the record that explains the state's fury is that the August 4 primary was already run on the HB 1 lines. ABC17 News reports that Boone County, split between the 3rd and 5th Districts for the primary, would go back to the 3rd and 4th for November under that order, and quotes County Clerk Brianna Lennon saying the nominees chosen in August keep their districts. That is the fact behind Attorney General Catherine Hanaway's statement, carried by Fox News: "Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election. This unprecedented decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full-fledged constitutional crisis." Kehoe, per the same report, said that "holding a primary election under one congressional map and a general election under another is unprecedented and creates uncertainty for Missouri voters." Hoskins, per KBIA, said that "no court has ever rejected a congressional map that had already been used in an election." The president posted on Truth Social Thursday, per Fox, that the court "just ridiculously ruled in favor of changing the maps back to what they were a long time ago."
Hanaway pledged an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and on Thursday night she took the first procedural step, asking the Missouri court to stay its own injunction while the federal court reviewed the case, or for an "alternative stay" to give the justices time. By Friday morning the answer was in. Chief Justice Brent Powell signed a one-sentence order, quoted by ABC17: "Respondent's motion for a stay of injunction pending emergency appeal and application for stay to the Supreme Court of the United States overruled." The federal appeal is still the one live path back for the map before the midterms, and it is the reason the contract did not go to zero, but as of Friday afternoon it is an appeal the state has to make without any help from the court it is appealing. 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, and on Friday it had no second thoughts.
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 price history 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 Thursday evening's pull, at 7:11 p.m. ET, was 7.7 cents. Thursday's full session ran to 23,129 contracts against 13,964 of open interest at that pull, so more contracts changed hands in one day than were open on the contract that evening. 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 Thursday's 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 was 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 after the contract's July 2025 issuance and before November 1, that map is not enjoined or struck down as of the expiration date, and it is in effect for the first scheduled 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. 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. I come back to those two dates below, because Friday's tape is a fight over exactly that distinction.
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 28,112 contracts in Thursday's session, the most of any state, and was worth 1 cent at the evening pull before the overnight bounce. 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 price history 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 price history 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, neither one is what the contract is counting. What both contracts did next, though, was the same thing.
What Moved Since Thursday Evening: Missouri Nearly Doubled Off 7.7 Cents
The overnight tape is the part of this story the first edition could not have. Between Thursday's 7:11 p.m. ET pull and Friday's 4:23 p.m. pull, seven contracts on the board printed a change worth reading, and the two that crashed on Thursday both bounced.
| State | Last, Thu 7:11 p.m. | Last, Fri 4:23 p.m. | Bid / ask, Fri 4:23 p.m. | Contracts traded since Thu pull |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missouri | 7.7¢ | 15.0¢ | 13.0¢ / 16.0¢ | 8,006 |
| Alabama | 1.0¢ | 6.0¢ | 4.0¢ / 6.0¢ | 3,910 |
| North Carolina | 97.8¢ | 93.3¢ | 93.5¢ / 95.8¢ | 464 |
| Louisiana | 98.3¢ | 96.0¢ | 96.0¢ / 98.0¢ | 55 |
| Utah | 4.0¢ | 3.5¢ | 2.1¢ / 4.5¢ | 1,220 |
| Virginia | 2.6¢ | 3.9¢ | 3.8¢ / 3.9¢ | 500 |
| Mississippi | 2.0¢ | 6.0¢ | 2.0¢ / 6.0¢ | 236 |
Contract counts are summed from every print on each contract's trade tape after 7:11 p.m. ET Thursday. Florida printed 38 contracts and eased 0.9 of a cent; every other contract on the board either did not trade or moved by less than a cent on a fraction of a contract.
Missouri's row is 116 prints and 8,006 contracts, and the size-weighted average of all of them is 12.7 cents, which is the fairest single number for where the contract lived overnight. The sequence matters more than the average. At 7:27 p.m. Thursday a buyer swept about 1,000 contracts from 9 cents up to 12, and buyers kept lifting it to 16 by 7:56. Sellers took it back down over the next two hours, 300 contracts at 10 cents at 8:49 and 511 at 8 cents at 10:02. Then, at 10:05:16 p.m., one sweep took 1,800 contracts in a single second, filling from 8.9 cents up to 17, with 786 of them at the top price, 514 in one fill. That is the biggest single order on the contract since the ruling, and it is the moment the market stopped treating 8 cents as the answer. Sellers leaned on it again overnight, 309 contracts at 7.8 to 8.5 cents just before 1 a.m., and 100 more at 5:07 a.m. that printed 7.2 cents, the low of the whole post-pull tape and the last time the contract traded under a dime. At 6:03 a.m. a second sweep bought 1,644 contracts from 12 cents to 18, including 1,000 at 14 and 492 at 18, and the hourly candle around it is the most telling number on the page: open interest fell by 1,522 contracts in that hour, so most of that order was closing positions that already existed, not opening new ones. Somebody who was short Missouri paid up to get out. From there the contract spent Friday between 13 and 17 cents, on small size, and the last print before the pull was 13 contracts at 15 cents at 3:16 p.m. Open interest ran from 13,964 at Thursday's pull to a peak of 15,819 early Friday and back to 14,300, which is a contract where the new money that came in at the lows has already partly left.
Alabama's bounce is smaller and thinner. A buyer took 681 contracts from 3 cents up to 7 at 11:39 p.m. Thursday, sellers pushed 937 back down to 2 cents at 1:38 a.m., and a 4:03 a.m. sweep of 772 contracts ran up to 11 cents, the post-pull high. By 2:11 p.m. Friday sellers had worked about 462 contracts down to 4 cents, and the 6-cent last price on that Friday board was a fraction of one contract that printed at 3:35 p.m. The bid was 4 cents at that pull. On September 3 I wrote that a bid appearing above a nickel would be the first tell that a special session was coming; it has not appeared, and I have found no report of one being called. This is a contract that went from no bid to a 4-cent bid on about 3,900 contracts, with no news attached, and I read it as the same trade as Missouri's bounce in miniature: buyers deciding a penny was too cheap for anything with two months left, not buyers who know something.
North Carolina is the finished state that really moved, and it moved the wrong way. Sellers started chipping at it late Thursday night, in the high 96s, and from 5:55 a.m. Friday they printed six clusters at 93 cents: 35 contracts at 9:56 a.m., 64 at 12:38 p.m., 49 at 3:08 p.m. and two smaller ones into the close, while buyers paid 94 to 96 in between. The whole tape was 464 contracts both ways, about 370 of it selling, the book was 93.5 bid against 95.8 asked, and I could find no court action or filing behind it; the federal panel that let the map stand in November did so ahead of a full trial, per WUNC, and nothing new has been reported since. Louisiana's 2.3-cent drop is three sells into a 96-cent bid that was already sitting there at Thursday's pull, 55 contracts in all, a last-trade move rather than a book move. Utah's 1,220 contracts were buyers on four of five prints, at 3.5 and 4 cents, on a contract whose map cannot pay. Virginia's 500 went through at 3.8 and 3.9 cents in one minute Friday afternoon. Mississippi's 236 were buyers at 3 to 6 cents on a state with no map at all. All of that is small, and it is the small moves that make the point: on a Friday when the only news was a stay denial that made Missouri's path harder, the flow on this board was buy-side on almost every single-digit contract that traded, Alabama, Virginia and Mississippi up, and Utah drifting half a cent lower on buy-side prints.
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 a week of court orders they sort into three tiers: seven finished states priced at 96 cents or better, Missouri alone in the middle at 36, and 17 states at 7 cents 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 97.9¢ | 96.0¢ / 97.8¢ | 0 | 5,645 | Legislature's map enacted October 22, 2025; federal panel allowed its use |
| Texas | 97.9¢ | 97.9¢ / 98.0¢ | 0 | 15,264 | Map signed August 29, 2025; U.S. Supreme Court stayed the block on December 4 |
| Florida | 97.4¢ | 97.4¢ / 98.5¢ | 36 | 9,636 | Legislature's map signed May 4, 2026 |
| Ohio | 97.3¢ | 97.3¢ / 98.5¢ | 35 | 7,703 | Commission map adopted October 31, 2025 |
| California | 97.0¢ | 97.0¢ / 97.9¢ | 34 | 36,075 | Proposition 50 passed November 4, 2025; U.S. Supreme Court declined the appeal |
| Tennessee | 96.0¢ | 96.0¢ / 98.0¢ | 30 | 1,826 | Legislature's map signed May 7, 2026; ACLU suit pending |
| Louisiana | 96.0¢ | 96.0¢ / 97.2¢ | 49 | 14,369 | Legislature's map enacted May 29, 2026; challenges filed |
| Missouri | 36.0¢ | 35.0¢ / 37.0¢ | 7,334 | 42,803 | Two orders in conflict: the state Supreme Court bars HB 1 for November (Kavanaugh denied a stay September 8); a federal judge's order the same day mandates it; contempt hearing September 10 |
| Wisconsin | 6.7¢ | 2.1¢ / 5.7¢ | 0 | 5,234 | Three challenges rejected; the current 6-2 map stands |
| Illinois | 4.0¢ | 2.1¢ / 3.9¢ | 0 | 9,673 | No qualifying map adopted as of this pull |
| Arizona | 4.0¢ | 2.0¢ / 4.0¢ | 0 | 705 | No qualifying map adopted as of this pull |
| South Carolina | 3.8¢ | 1.2¢ / 3.8¢ | 0 | 8,965 | Senate blocked the calendar extension a redraw needed |
| Indiana | 3.7¢ | 1.0¢ / 3.8¢ | 0 | 6,766 | State Senate rejected the House's map, December 11 |
| Washington | 3.2¢ | 0.1¢ / 3.9¢ | 0 | 4,340 | No map; Democrats lack the two-thirds a redraw needs |
| Georgia | 3.0¢ | 1.1¢ / 3.0¢ | 0 | 16,654 | No qualifying map adopted as of this pull |
| Virginia | 2.6¢ | 2.6¢ / 3.5¢ | 0 | 36,997 | April referendum map struck by the state Supreme Court, May 8 |
| Minnesota | 2.5¢ | 1.1¢ / 3.8¢ | 0 | 2,633 | No qualifying map adopted as of this pull |
| New Jersey | 2.2¢ | 1.0¢ / 2.2¢ | 0 | 973 | No qualifying map adopted as of this pull |
| Utah | 2.1¢ | 2.0¢ / 4.3¢ | 741 | 31,493 | Court-ordered map, November 10, 2025; a court-drawn map pays No |
| Nebraska | 2.0¢ | 1.1¢ / 2.0¢ | 0 | 1,353 | No qualifying map adopted as of this pull |
| Maryland | 2.0¢ | 0.4¢ / 2.0¢ | 96 | 12,371 | House passed a map February 2; the Senate never voted |
| Mississippi | 2.0¢ | 2.0¢ / 4.0¢ | 0 | 3,648 | No qualifying map adopted as of this pull |
| Kansas | 2.0¢ | 2.0¢ / 3.9¢ | 0 | 1,784 | Redraw push stalled about 20 votes short in the House |
| Alabama | 2.0¢ | 2.0¢ / 5.0¢ | 314 | 12,849 | 2023 map reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court; predates the contract per Kalshi's note |
| New York | 1.0¢ | 1.0¢ / 3.5¢ | 0 | 13,598 | Court redraw blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, March 2 |
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 5:52 a.m. ET Wednesday, so Missouri's volume cell carries most of Wednesday's session and none of Tuesday's 111,276. Wisconsin's 6.7¢ printed on a single contract and Indiana's 3.7¢ on less than eight, both in a Sunday-evening sweep of small prints across the low end of the board; the count below carries both at face value.
The row to read twice is still 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 2.1 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.
What Moved Since September 4: Missouri Printed 1 Cent And 64 Cents In The Same Hour
Between Friday's 4:23 p.m. ET pull and Thursday's 5:52 a.m. pull, 122,920 contracts traded on Missouri alone, about six times what the other 24 states traded between them. Seven contracts moved on real size; the rest of the board's changes came on a handful of prints. The price history and the docket for Tuesday, September 8 are set side by side below, because the price history carries no reasons and this page keeps its readings labeled as readings.
| State | Last, Fri 4:23 p.m. | Last, Thu 5:52 a.m. | Bid / ask now | Contracts traded since Fri pull | Open interest change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missouri | 15.0¢ | 36.0¢ | 35.0¢ / 37.0¢ | 122,920 | +28,503 |
| Utah | 3.5¢ | 2.1¢ | 2.0¢ / 4.3¢ | 6,594 | +5,050 |
| Virginia | 3.9¢ | 2.6¢ | 2.6¢ / 3.5¢ | 6,503 | +1,366 |
| Alabama | 6.0¢ | 2.0¢ | 2.0¢ / 5.0¢ | 3,892 | −115 |
| North Carolina | 93.3¢ | 97.9¢ | 96.0¢ / 97.8¢ | 1,325 | +554 |
| Mississippi | 6.0¢ | 2.0¢ | 2.0¢ / 4.0¢ | 410 | −212 |
| Tennessee | 97.0¢ | 96.0¢ | 96.0¢ / 98.0¢ | 252 | −218 |
Contract counts are summed from every print on each contract's trade tape after 4:23 p.m. ET Friday; open interest change is Thursday's figure against the September 4 board. Wisconsin's move from 2.2¢ to 6.7¢ is one contract, Indiana's from 0.2¢ to 3.7¢ is under eight, and New York's from 3.5¢ to 1.0¢ is ten. South Carolina doubled from 1.8¢ to 3.8¢ on two prints and 118 contracts. Ohio eased 1.1¢ and California 0.9¢ on 63 and 177 contracts; Florida, Louisiana and Texas are where Friday left them.
Missouri's row is 674 prints, and 494 of them belong to Tuesday. The contract had drifted up quietly through the weekend, 16 cents at Friday's close, 17 Saturday on 1,905 contracts, 20 Sunday, 21 Monday, and it was 18 to 20 cents on 42 contracts through Tuesday lunchtime. At 5:28 p.m. ET the selling started: 1,000 contracts at 17 and 1,000 at 11 in the same minute, 315 at 7 at 5:31, 4,142 at 3.1 cents at 5:33, 2,533 at 2.4 at 5:38, and by 5:54 the prints read 1.1 cents. All but 36 of the 10,487 contracts in that hour were seller-initiated. The docket entry beside it: Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied Hoskins's application to stay the Missouri Supreme Court's ruling on Tuesday afternoon, without an opinion and without referring it to the full court, per Roll Call; NBC News carried the order at 5:35 p.m. ET.
Then the price history turned around, and the docket has a second entry for the same hour. At 6:18 p.m. buyers took 839 contracts at 4.3 cents and 1,000 at 7.4. In the single second of 6:21:44 one sweep filled 1,931 at 14, 1,000 at 6.6, 1,111 at 25, 2,000 at 50 and 900 at 40. Sellers answered with 9,981 contracts at 9 cents at 6:27, the largest single print in the price history since Friday's pull, and buyers walked through it: 3,333 at 48 at 6:40, 8,087 at 63 at 6:43, and 316 at 64 at 6:44, the high of the week. The 6 p.m. hour ran 295 prints and 82,936 contracts, opened at 1 cent, closed at 31, and 61 percent of it was buyer-initiated. Beside it: Chief Judge Stephen R. Clark of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri issued a temporary restraining order minutes after Kavanaugh's denial, per Roll Call, in a suit brought by Republican Rep. Bob Onder, enjoining Hoskins from "implementing, using, publishing, distributing, or mandating the use of any congressional district map other than the HB 1 map for the November 3, 2026 general election," as Law Dork quotes the order. Clark wrote, per Roll Call, that "using a different map for the general election would wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness of Missouri's congressional elections"; the order runs 14 days pending a hearing on a longer one.
The third hour is the one I keep coming back to, because it is the market deciding that two orders are not the same as one. From 6:46 p.m. sellers took it back: 1,953 at 30, 1,655 at 25 at 7:01, 1,000 at 6 cents at 7:09, the low of the 7 p.m. hour, and the 7 p.m. hour's 12,463 contracts were three-quarters seller-initiated. Buyers then paid 14 to 25 for 4,177 contracts in the 8 p.m. hour, and the contract spent the rest of Tuesday between 13 and 19. Also on Tuesday evening, untimed in the reports: Hoskins certified the November ballot and sent local election authorities a copy of Clark's order, saying it "takes precedence over the Missouri Supreme Court's order," per St. Louis Public Radio, and Governor Kehoe and Attorney General Hanaway posted on X that the HB 1 map would be used in November, per NBC. The same evening the Missouri Supreme Court ordered Hoskins to answer People Not Politicians' contempt motion by noon Central on Wednesday and to appear in person for argument at 10 a.m. Central on Thursday, per Law Dork. Tuesday's session closed at 17 cents on 111,276 contracts, and open interest nearly tripled between the two pulls, from 14,300 to 42,803, with most of the volume in that window Tuesday's.
Wednesday added the price this page is stamped at. The contract traded 20 to 26 cents in the morning, 2,324 contracts in the 8 a.m. hour and most of it buying, then at 4:42 p.m. a buyer took 500 at 25 and 1,000 at 27, the price history ran to 40 by 5 p.m. and printed 46 just after 6 p.m., 981 contracts sold at 39 at 7:54, and the last print of the day was 334 contracts at 36 at 11:54 p.m. The Wednesday docket was the briefing on the contempt motion already before the state court: People Not Politicians' lawyer Chuck Hatfield wrote that "this Court should make clear that regardless of other orders (except from the United States Supreme Court) the Missouri Secretary of State must comply with this court's injunction," and the state's filing, by Solicitor General Louis Capozzi, answered that "per the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the Secretary must follow the federal-law injunction issued by the federal court," both as KCUR and St. Louis Public Radio quote the filings. Late Wednesday afternoon People Not Politicians asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay Clark's order pending appeal, per Law Dork and the Associated Press, and early Thursday Clark denied Hoskins's motion to bar the state court from holding him in contempt, per Law Dork. Anders Walker, a law professor at Saint Louis University, told St. Louis Public Radio that "it's unusual to have this kind of a street fight between the state supreme court, a federal district judge, and the governor." The book at Thursday's pull is 35 bid on 209 contracts with 1,000 more at 34, against 37 asked on 40 contracts with about 1,370 more between 39 and 41: a real two-sided price with size a few cents either side of it.
The smaller moves are worth a paragraph because four of them happened inside Tuesday's hours. Utah went first: 5,442 contracts sold at 2.0 and 2.1 cents at 5:15 p.m., 13 minutes before Missouri's first sells, on a contract whose court-drawn map pays No; buyers took 719 back at 4.0 to 4.4 on Wednesday morning, the last print is 2.1, and open interest is up 5,050 over the window, consistent with new shorts rather than longs leaving. Alabama's buyers showed up in the same half hour Missouri ran to 64: about 2,000 contracts at 3 and 4 cents between 6:23 and 6:37 p.m., and 314 sold at 2 cents on Wednesday night is the last print. Virginia had the strangest minute on the board: from 7:49 to 7:50 p.m. Tuesday a buyer swept about 5,800 contracts from 3.8 cents up to 8.6 on a map the state Supreme Court struck in May, and sellers had it back at 2.6 by 10:29 p.m. The price history does not say whether that buyer was reading the Missouri order across a state line; it says the bid did not hold, and open interest is up 1,366. North Carolina is the one move that undid itself: 694 contracts bought at 96 cents at 6:03 p.m. Friday and buyers at 97.9 on Sunday recovered the 4 cents that came off it last week, with no headline behind the drop or the recovery. Mississippi's 6 cents were four cents too many on 410 contracts, and Tennessee's 96, on 252, is now the finished state carrying the most risk premium alongside Louisiana.
More live boards (prices as of September 4): the 2026 House control board, a Democratic House about 87¢ on the balance-of-power rungs · the 2026 Senate control board, a Republican Senate about 55¢ on the same rungs · 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 morning's pull the prices sum to about 7.6 states. Friday's pull summed to 7.4, Thursday evening's to 7.3, and the same sum with the September 2 closes for Missouri and Alabama was about 8.7. So the ruling and the Alabama repricing took roughly a state and a half off the midterms' map count between two closes, and the week since has added about a fifth of a state back, from 7.43 to 7.64, every cent of it Missouri's: the other 24 contracts net out to essentially zero between them.
Where the 7.6 sits is the part worth holding onto. The seven finished states contribute about 6.79 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 85 cents between them, and Missouri holds 36 of those. Strip Missouri out and the rest of the country is priced at about half of one state, spread across 17 contracts where the bid sometimes reads a tenth of a cent, and the largest single piece of that half is Wisconsin's 6.7 cents, which printed on one contract.
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 in force, that ceiling reads 15; with HB 1, 16; and which of the two applies is the question the courts spent this week on. Alabama is the odd one out in the other direction: NBC's tally counts the 2023 map, which it expects to cut the state's Democratic seats from two to one, and that seat stays in the count because the map does govern November; it simply is not new by this contract's definition. The House control price I mentioned up top 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.
Two Dates, Two Different Questions: November 1 And November 3
The promise I made above was to separate the two dates, because the 15-cent argument and the 8-cent argument on Friday's tape, and the 1-cent and 64-cent arguments less than an hour apart on Tuesday's, are really an argument about which one matters.
November 1 is the market's date, and it belongs to the legislature. Trading on every contract closes at 12:59 a.m. ET on November 1, which is 11:59 p.m. on October 31 in Jefferson City, and the rules use the same cutoff for adoption: a qualifying map has to have been "adopted" by the legislature "before Nov 1, 2026." That is the date a brand-new Missouri map would have to beat, and it is not the date Missouri's problem lives on. HB 1 was adopted last September; it clears November 1 by more than a year. The only way this date bites Missouri is if the state tries to answer the court with a fresh map from a special session, and nothing of the kind has been called. Kehoe's statement after the ruling, as KCTV5 carried it, was that the decision "does not change our belief in the Missouri First Map," which is a promise to defend HB 1, not to replace it. For Alabama the same date is the whole contract: its 2 cents is a price on the legislature adopting something new in the next seven weeks.
November 3 is the voters' date, and it is the one Missouri's contract actually turns on. That is the general election, which the court has ordered run on the 2022 lines, and it is also the referendum on HB 1. The contract's third test is that the map be "in effect for use in the first scheduled federal election after its adoption," and on my reading the first scheduled federal election that test means is the November 3, 2026 general; the August primary complicates that, and I deal with it in a moment. So here is the distinction Friday's buyers and sellers were pricing: a Yes vote on the referendum would make HB 1 the law of Missouri going forward, but it cannot make HB 1 the map that governed November 3, because that election will already have been held on the old lines the same day. There is a counter-reading, and I should name it: the August 4 primary was a scheduled federal election, it came after HB 1's adoption, and it was run on the HB 1 lines, so a Yes holder can argue the third test was already met in August. I do not buy it, because the same test is joined to the second one, which asks whether the map is enjoined as of expiration, and a map a court has barred from the general is not "in effect" in any sense the board has scored before. But that is the ambiguity Kalshi has not clarified. There is a second one now, beside it: the Missouri Supreme Court's injunction against HB 1 is still standing, so if Judge Clark's order holds and HB 1 governs November 3, the second test, "not enjoined, vacated, stayed, or struck down" as of expiration, would be read against a map one court has enjoined and another has ordered used, and Kalshi has clarified neither. The referendum cuts the other way too, on my reading and not the exchange's: if HB 1 governs November 3 under the federal order and voters reject it the same day, the "vacated or struck down" test becomes arguable before November 8, depending on when the result is certified. On the contract's own wording, as I read it, a referendum win does not rescue this contract; Kalshi has posted no Missouri clarification the way it did for Alabama, and until it does that reading is mine, not the exchange's. What rescues the contract is a federal court putting HB 1 back in force for November 3, and on Tuesday, September 8, one did for now, with a 14-day temporary restraining order, by a route this page had not priced on Friday: Justice Kavanaugh denied Hoskins's application to stay the Missouri ruling, and minutes later a federal district judge in the Eastern District of Missouri, in a separate suit brought by Rep. Bob Onder, ordered Hoskins to use no map other than HB 1 for November 3. The referendum's backers asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to stay that order, and the Missouri Supreme Court hears a contempt motion against Hoskins on Thursday morning. The certification deadline came and went on Tuesday with Hoskins certifying the ballot and attaching the federal order to it.
November 8 is the exchange's date, with a caveat the data forces me to print. The contract's final expiration is 10 a.m. ET on November 8, and that is when the "not enjoined, vacated, stayed, or struck down" test is taken. But Kalshi's market data also lists an expected expiration of November 1 at 10 a.m. ET, ten hours after the close, and the rules say only "as of the Expiration Date." If the exchange settles on the expected date, the November 3 path never gets judged at all and the 36 cents is a price on the federal order still standing before Halloween. I am reading the price against the final date, November 8, until Kalshi says otherwise, and that is the reading every cent on this page uses. On it, a stay granted in late October and a map in force on November 3 would pay. A map restored on November 9 would not. Kalshi also listed a second Missouri market on September 3 at 6 p.m. ET, "Will Missouri hold its HB 1 redistricting referendum?", which pays Yes if the vote is actually held before November 4. As of Friday's pull it had not opened for trading and had no prints, but it prices a related question, not the mirror image of this one: whether the vote happens at all before November 4, which a federal stay of the Missouri ruling would not by itself decide.
Put the three dates together and the 36-cent price reads as one thing: a bit better than one chance in three that the federal order mandating HB 1 is still standing on November 8, the date the contract's second test is taken, with a special-session map priced at close to nothing and the referendum itself priced at nothing at all, because it cannot pay. Whether one in three is generous depends on precedents this board has already lived through. 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. Virginia's emergency appeal to the same court was denied on May 15, and that contract trades at 2.6 cents. Missouri's case is different from both in the way Hanaway and Hoskins keep pointing at: a primary has already been held on the map a state court has now set aside, which is the argument the state made in Washington, and the one Judge Clark accepted. The Missouri court's Friday order gave no reasoning at all, and the nominees, per Clerk Lennon, keep their districts either way.
What Moves This Board Before The Close
- Thursday, September 10, 10 A.m. Central. The Missouri Supreme Court hears People Not Politicians' contempt motion against Hoskins, who was ordered to appear in person. The state's answer is that the federal injunction now binds him and the state court's order "can no longer compel the Secretary," in the state's filing, as KCUR quotes it. Whatever the court does, the price history will price it the hour it lands, the way it priced Tuesday's two orders less than an hour apart.
- The Emergency Application, Reversed. Last week the filing to watch was the state's application to stay the Missouri ruling, and Kavanaugh denied it Tuesday without opinion. Now it is People Not Politicians' application to stay Judge Clark's order, filed Wednesday afternoon. At 36 cents the market has the federal order standing through November 8 at a bit better than one in three; at Friday's 15, a federal rescue was a path with no case behind it. The precedent for speed is still the Texas stay above. The precedent for the other outcome is still Virginia.
- Ballots. Clark's order, issued September 8, runs 14 days, to about September 22, pending a hearing on a longer one. NBC reports the first ballots mail September 19, and St. Louis County's election director, Eric Fey, told KCUR the military and overseas deadlines around the 18th and 19th can be met with overtime. So unless the Supreme Court acts on People Not Politicians' application first, the ballots go out on HB 1 lines under an order that lapses three days later unless extended or replaced, and the contract's third test asks which map the election is actually run on.
- A New Alabama Map. Under Kalshi's note, only a map the legislature adopts before November 1 pays. About 2,000 contracts were bought at 3 and 4 cents during Missouri's Tuesday spike and the bid is back at 2, three cents under the nickel I said to watch for, so the tell has not fired; a special-session call would be the news, and the price would not wait for the gavel.
- Litigation In The Finished States. Tennessee trades at 96.0 cents with an ACLU challenge pending after a judge declined to block the map in May. Louisiana, with multiple suits filed, trades at 96.0, and North Carolina, with a trial on the merits still ahead, is back at 97.9. The board is charging 4 cents for Tennessee's risk, 4 for Louisiana's and 2 for North Carolina's, and the North Carolina number that moved without a headline last Friday moved back without one this week, which is the reading I would give the drop in hindsight: noise.
The Contract, The Book And The Timeline
| Venue | Kalshi |
| The Event | "What states will redistrict before the 2026 Congressional elections?" (Kalshi KXREDISTRICTING-26, verbatim title), 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 10, 2026, 10 a.m. CT: the Missouri Supreme Court's contempt hearing on Hoskins; People Not Politicians' application to the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the September 8 federal order |
| Then | The November 3 midterms and Missouri referendum, both after the close; November 8 expiration |
| Close | November 1, 2026, 12:59 a.m. ET (04:59 UTC); expiration November 8, 2026, 10 a.m. ET |
| Depth | About 2.26 million contracts of lifetime volume across the 25 contracts, roughly 303,000 still open; Virginia alone has traded 617,000 of the lifetime figure, Missouri 251,900 |
| Prices As Of | September 10, 2026, 5:52 a.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 617,000 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 lifetime volume was 128,900 at Friday's pull and is 251,900 at this one: the contract has traded almost as much in the six days since as it had in the 13 months before them. 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.
The Bottom Line
Missouri had traded as the board's eighth finished state through September 2. 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. On Friday the same court refused to pause its order; on Tuesday Justice Kavanaugh refused to pause it, a federal district judge ordered the map used anyway, and the contract printed 1 cent and 64 cents inside the same hour, then closed Wednesday at 36. The cents Missouri holds are a price on that federal order still standing on November 8, and on Kalshi scoring the map it protects as Yes, not on the voters, because the November 3 referendum, whichever way it goes, cannot make HB 1 the map that November 3 was run on. Alabama came off the same day, with a rules note of the same date spelling out why a 2023 map cannot count, and sits at a 2-cent bid with no special session called. 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 7.6-state count the market carried on September 10 was right, and by how many states.
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
