The 2028 presidential election seems far away. Or is it already here?
The midterm ballots are barely counted, and a long list of would-be candidates is already elbowing for a lane in a campaign that, by Election Day, will feel like it started during the Truman administration.
Outside the Super Bowl, few things are as popular on prediction markets as a presidential race. Two years before anyone casts a ballot, Kalshi’s 2028 markets have already drawn nearly half a billion dollars in trading.
While prediction markets have an excellent long-term record of accuracy, this far from an election, you can’t expect surgical precision.
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What the markets can show us is who’s trading like a blue chip, who’s stuck in the middle, and whose campaign feels like a penny stock that needs a miracle rally to be competitive. So let’s look ahead with a way-too-early presidential market report, starting at the top.
What if I told you the Democratic front-runner for 2028 is a man a third of Democrats have never heard of? That’s what a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found when it comes to Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, and plenty of other Americans are drawing a blank too.
Still, a Democrat who wins Georgia by 18 points, in a state President Trump carried in 2024, doesn’t stay anonymous for long. Kalshi gives him a 26% chance of winning the Democratic nomination, the best in the field. Not bad for a guy much of his own party couldn’t pick out of a lineup.
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On the Republican side, Vice President J.D. Vance leads the pack, with a 33% chance of winning the nomination but only a 12% chance of winning the presidency. That gap fits what election analyst Nate Silver calls the VP curse. Vice presidents whose bosses are underwater in the polls tend to win their party’s nomination, then lose in November. Then again, Vance has been underestimated before, and he seems to be at his best in high-leverage situations.
Both men have also hinted they might not run at all. Coming from politicians, that promise has roughly the credibility of a vow of celibacy from Jensen Huang.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom looked like a blue chip a year ago. His chance of winning the Democratic nomination has since cratered from 37% to about 12%. He leaves office in January, which frees him up for a full-time campaign and gives even more airtime to a man who has never been accused of camera shyness. Whether voters want that is another question.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sits around 13% to win the Democratic nomination. The bigger question is which race she’s running in. Traders actually think she’s more likely to run for the Senate than for president. Either way, somebody is going to claim the democratic socialist lane. If it’s not her, maybe Bernie Sanders takes a third crack at it. He’ll only be 87.
Like Ocasio-Cortez, Secretary of State Marco Rubio faces a which-job question. He’s at 18% to win the Republican nomination, and the market sees him as just as likely to be the running mate as the nominee.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who ran in 2024 and also leaves office in January, has been the biggest riser in the Republican market since the midterms. He was under 5% to win the nomination before the votes were counted and is now at 17%, nipping at Rubio’s heels.
Then come the penny stocks. On the Democratic side, that’s a crowd in the single digits for the nomination: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Former Vice President Kamala Harris lands here too, a somewhat embarrassing showing for the woman at the top of the ticket two years ago.
If you’re shopping the bargain bin, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore at 2.2% and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer at 0.7% might be in your wheelhouse.
(In dead last, at 0.0%: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.)
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On the Republican side, the penny stocks include Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley could be value plays. And somewhere in that mix is President Donald Trump, who I wouldn’t put past publicly flirting with a constitutionally prohibited third run just to annoy the media.
Many of these names won’t make it to the first primary. Today’s penny stock could be next summer’s blue chip. That’s the fun of watching these markets this early: prices will move with every speech, stumble and suspiciously timed book tour between now and then.
Check back in a year. A few of these stocks will have soared, and plenty will have been quietly delisted.
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