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.”
A wave of bettors have flooded prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket this year with millions of dollars — and dreams of making a fortune on American democracy.
The frantic activity is transforming elections into a new kind of casino, crowning millionaires who can correctly predict who will win Senate races, control the House and even become president. Many more will lose their money after finding themselves on the wrong side of a bet.
Prediction markets let people wager on whether something will happen or not — like whether Democrats will control the House of Representatives next year. In early October, the odds for that outcome on Polymarket hovered around 90 percent, meaning a wager of $100 would result in $9.50 in profit if Democrats took control of the House. A long-shot $100 bet on Republicans controlling the House would haul in $864 if correct.
Nearly every national election around the world is shadowed by a bustling prediction market. The websites were credited with correctly predicting the presidential race in 2024 by favoring Donald J. Trump, even though polls had given the edge to Kamala Harris. But bettors incorrectly predicted the winner in Brazil’s recent presidential election, giving Flávio Bolsonaro an 81 percent chance of winning on Polymarket. He lost.
The companies’ popularity has also raised concerns about whether they violate state gambling laws and are being manipulated by those with insider information. Anti-gambling groups say the sites prey on addiction.
Both Kalshi and Polymarket said in statements that they are financial trading tools, distinct from gambling. Both said they monitor for insider trading and report it to the authorities and stressed that they are becoming accurate indicators for predicting elections.
In the United States, midterm prediction market trading has topped $221 million, compared with $92 million during the 2024 election, according to a report from the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, a Washington research group.
All that activity translates into odds that have become national talking points, supplanting polls in the eyes of many as the most reliable predictor of what will happen on Election Day.
Few races have drawn more attention than the Texas Senate race, a close contest between James Talarico, the Democratic candidate, and Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee and the state’s attorney general. Texas has not elected a Democratic senator in three decades.
Polls show that Mr. Talarico has a narrow lead over Mr. Paxton. Prediction markets show more confidence: Mr. Talarico has about a 65 percent chance of winning, according to Polymarket and Kalshi. More than $39 million has been wagered on the race, according to the Anti-Corruption Data Collective.
Mr. Bensoussan has put his money on Mr. Talarico, betting $114,000 through a combination of bets on Polymarket and Kalshi.
Those odds shifted briefly in Mr. Paxton’s favor in early October after a conspiracy theory circulated about Mr. Talarico’s well-being — a claim denied by the candidate, but not before it became national news.
Bettors have said those kinds of fluctuations are a strength of prediction markets over polling, which can be slow to adapt. Researchers at Vanderbilt University found that polling during the 2024 presidential race remained remarkably steady while prediction markets correctly predicted a win for Mr. Trump sooner.
To Polymarket sharps like Mr. Bensoussan, seeing the odds shift slightly in Mr. Paxton’s favor over an online conspiracy theory showed that there was still a lot of amateur interest in the race — what sharps call “dumb money” — reacting to a minor issue unlikely to shift the outcome.
The bets were “ideologically driven” by supporters of Mr. Paxton, he said, and are “informed by people thinking they can make 10 times their money by supporting their candidate.”
Though some bettors use sophisticated models and advanced methods to guide their decisions, Mr. Bensoussan puts weight on the vague sense of enthusiasm that voters feel toward candidates. He doesn’t have file folders stuffed with analysis or spreadsheets tracking each poll and economic metric. He keeps it in his head, refined through conversations with family, friends or his risk analyst, a member of his betting operation whom Mr. Bensoussan pays to avoid getting carried away with emotional bets.
That is the strategy Mr. Bensoussan has used since 2024. He had traveled to France to visit his father, who was dying, and began searching for a distraction. As a former Ph.D. student in political science, he decided on election betting. He discovered a knack for processing reams of information about politics and voters in his head.
He does not have a perfect track record. That year, he lost $52,000 after betting that Mr. Trump would not win every swing state — he did — and lost $36,000 after predicting that Ms. Harris would win the popular vote — she didn’t. But he earned more than he lost, pocketing more than $350,000 that year with bets in dozens of other contests.
Overall, he has won more than $3.15 million, and lost $1.05 million.
“We do a good amount of research, but I’m not always right, obviously,” he said. “You can’t be in this in this business without losing money from time to time.”
Mr. Bensoussan’s efforts to find an edge can border on the extreme. He traveled to Portugal last year to talk with more than 100 voters on the streets of Lisbon and Porto about the country’s presidential election, helping him earn about $80,000 in profit. To gain an edge in South Korea’s election last year, he hired freelance analysts in the country.
Many bettors have gravitated to election wagers on prediction markets because elections draw interest from across the nation — and sometimes the world — for an extended period of time. That allows millions of dollars to accumulate, giving people like Mr. Bensoussan the chance to place larger bets in more active markets.
Because voters feel as if they have a personal stake in elections, amateurs and partisans frequently enter the markets with risky bets fueled by dreams more than shrewd calculations.
“Everyone thinks they know everything about politics, right?” said Alex Keeney, a journalist turned trader who now runs Eventual, a news site aimed at bettors. Mr. Keeney made an excursion this year to Portland, Maine, to speak with voters about the Senate race there.
“Markets are a good tool for figuring out who actually knows what they’re talking about,” he added.
Just over a week before Election Day, Mr. Bensoussan traveled to New York City to defend his bets at a packed prediction market conference, called NEXTPredict. About 2,000 attendees filled conference rooms to hear from traders like Mr. Bensoussan, a new kind of celebrity.
Inside the conference, fortune cookies were handed out with ads tucked inside: “Your opinion on the future could be worth a fortune.” Outside, a truck with a large screen blared a protest: “GAMBLING IS NOT INVESTING.”
Mr. Bensoussan shared the stage with Matt Weiss, 28, a conservative-leaning bettor with nearly $220,000 on a prediction that the Republican Party will keep control of the Senate. Kalshi predicts they have a 36 percent chance of doing so, but if he’s right, he could earn around $133,700.
“Prediction markets offer a casino way to make returns on some fundamental analysis,” Mr. Weiss said in an interview.
Like Mr. Bensoussan, Mr. Weiss has a deep interest in American politics. His biggest bet also aligns with his political views: He suggested a wave of Republican super PAC funding will soon flood airwaves, closing polling gaps in key states like Texas.
“It’s impossible to not bet with your heart in some way,” he said.
Most of Mr. Bensoussan’s midterm bets are for Democrats — he identifies as a left-of-center independent. His biggest wager is more than $662,000 that Democrats will control the House.
Mr. Bensoussan hopes his hedging will bring him out on top, clearing $2 million in profit this year. After that, he plans to turn his attention to next year’s slate of global elections, including in France.
He would like to retire after earning about $10 million in profit. Or maybe, he said, closer to $50 million.
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