Polymarket and Kalshi Turn Midterm Elections Into a Multimillion Dollar Market

Practically everyone has an opinion on the midterm elections. David Bensoussan has one, too — and more than $1.5 million on the line.

Mr. Bensoussan, known online as Scottilicious, is a Polymarket sharp — an online trader who has made more than $1.7 million in profit on prediction markets. Websites like Polymarket and Kalshi allow anyone to place wagers on nearly anything, from the outcome of sports games to who will win “Traitors.”

Mr. Bensoussan, 49, has won mostly by predicting the outcome of elections. He uses a homespun method that combines polling, economic data and personal reads of voter enthusiasm with something more inexplicable: a sixth sense, an intuition or something closer to vibes.

He has now turned to this year’s midterm elections, where he has placed wagers worth over $1.5 million in over a dozen races. He’s predicting the outcome of everything from the Senate race in Alaska (he’s bet $113,000 on Mary Peltola, the Democrat) to whether the Republicans will control the House and Senate (he’s wagered $119,000 that they won’t).

In total, Mr. Bensoussan stands to win more than $340,000 after Nov. 3 if his bets prove correct. If Republicans perform better than expected, he could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. But he has attempted to hedge that risk by placing his largest wagers only when the odds are high, usually a 75 percent chance or more.

“It’s not my primary line of business,” he said in an interview from Los Angeles, where he spends his days running a real estate portfolio. “But this one is by far the most interesting.”