Trump Impeachment Odds: Kalshi Prices Round Three
Here is a number almost nobody in official Washington will say out loud. On Kalshi, the federally regulated market where people bet real money on political outcomes, the contract asking whether the House impeaches President Trump a third time before his term ends trades at 62 to 63 cents. A price in cents is a probability. The money says round three is more likely than not, and about half a million contracts have traded on the question.
The more interesting information hides in the calendar. Kalshi runs the same question with different deadlines, and the prices climb a staircase: impeachment by this September trades at a penny, by January 2027 at 3 or 4 cents, by March 2027 at 20 cents, by January 2028 at 60. Read those dates against the civics: a new Congress is seated in January 2027. The bettors are not predicting some sudden September rupture. They are saying, with their money, that impeachment is what happens in the first months of a new Democratic House, and the House-control market explains the rest: the combined odds of Democrats taking the chamber sit near 86% on the balance-of-power board. Do the division and the market's implied claim gets stark: if Democrats win the House, roughly a three-in-four chance they impeach.
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The Vote Count Moving Under The Surface
This market has floor votes to count, which most political markets never get. In June 2025, when Rep. Al Green forced an impeachment vote over the Iran strikes, the House tabled it 344-79, with 128 Democrats voting to kill it. Six months later, in December 2025, after Trump posted that six Democrats who had recorded a video telling service members to refuse illegal orders had engaged in "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH" (NBC News), the next forced vote looked different: on H.Res. 939, whose articles centered on those very threats, 140 Democrats voted to proceed, 23 voted to table, and 47 voted present (Newsweek's full roll call). From 79 to 140 in six months is the trendline the market is pricing. The grounds being drafted in public have piled up alongside it: the Iran campaign fought without congressional authorization, the administration's handling of the court-ordered Epstein files, and constitutional scholar Frank Bowman's August 17 essay in Slate laying out a full charge sheet, from the boat strikes to the Qatari jet.
Leadership, meanwhile, is running a playbook students of 2019 will recognize. Hakeem Jeffries has moved from "of course not" a priority, to "we haven't ruled anything out," to talk of letting the investigative process lead. Nancy Pelosi said "he's just not worth it" in March 2019 and impeached him nine months later. History's sample is small but unanimous: both times Democrats held the House under Trump, they impeached within a year. Even the president appears to agree with the market; he told a Kennedy Center audience in January that a Democratic House would try it again.
The Case Against The Price
The no side has real arguments, and the honest version of this piece includes them. Impeachment without removal is theater math: conviction takes 67 senators, and even the loudest advocates concede those votes do not exist, a futility Jamie Raskin acknowledges openly. The 23 Democrats who tabled December's vote include exactly the frontline members who decide majorities, and vulnerable-seat Democrats like Susie Lee have said the quiet part: swing districts punish impeachment crusades. The party's summer primaries rewarded affordability messaging, not oversight maximalism. And the 1998 precedent cuts both ways; Republicans impeached Clinton as a lame-duck Congress after losing seats, and paid for it. A Democratic House that watched that film might investigate for a year instead. That is the case for fading the 62, and "fading" here just means betting against it.
What To Watch
Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange; each side trades from 1¢ to 99¢ and pays $1.00 if it happens. The tells to watch, in order: the House control price, because this market is mostly that market wearing a robe; the March 2027 contract, which is where a post-midterm impeachment first becomes cheap to express and where new money shows up first; any Jeffries statement that drops the hedge; and the next forced floor vote's Democratic count against December's 140. The staircase of dates is the market's actual forecast, and it is more precise than any pundit's: not now, not before the election, and then, quite possibly, fast.
The forces that would hand Democrats the gavel are the story of the summer — we told it in our piece on the socialist primary wave, and the chamber math lives on our live House and Senate pages.
Prices quoted are live Kalshi market prices as of Thursday, August 20, 2026, and will keep moving until these markets settle. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange (18+; availability varies by state). OddsShopper covers prediction markets as an independent analyst: any model or panel figures referenced are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. This article does not advocate for or against any candidate, party, or outcome. Trading involves risk; contracts can go to zero.
