A 2026 Midterms recap: The mega-mega blue tsunami

Though there are still several key races yet to be resolved including the Alaska Senate, Mississippi Senate, and other House races, the vast majority of the 2026 Midterms are behind us.

Traders correctly predicted that Democrats would control the House, Senate, and the majority of Governorships before election day, and traders were hours ahead of the networks in predicting the vast majority of races including Senate and House control. Markets for control of the House hit a 99% likelihood at 8:10 PM ET and markets for control of the Senate passed 99% likelihood at 9:00 PM ET.

Total trading volume on 2026 Midterms markets surpassed $2.5 billion, compared with $1.3 billion for the 2024 election cycle.

Users were able to monitor the gauges, the map views, and the field views to monitor Senate, House, and Governorship Control and the individual races that composed the overall control. 

Here are dynamic views of how those graphics looked from 6 PM ET when the first polls closed in Kentucky and Indiana to 2 AM ET when most of the races were settled. 

As you can see from these graphics, while traders were favoring a "blue tsunami" (230+ Democratic House seats and 51+ Democratic Senate seats), they were not pricing in what is likely to be the "biggest blue wave since 2008" (250+ Democratic House seats and 56+ Senate seats). The graphic shows how traders' expectations of key Senate races in South Carolina and Mississippi, key Governor races in Texas and Kansas, and dozens of House races evolved over the night hours before the networks were picking up on the same trends.

There's a lot traders should be proud of last night. Of the nearly 500 races that are resolved as of 6:00 AM ET on November 4, 2026, the candidates traders were favoring won in 98% of those races.

In addition, traders picked up movement towards the Democrats in key Senate, House, and Governor races before the expert ratings. For example, the highest volume house market, TX-15, which President Trump won by 18% in 2024, traders favored the Democrat as early as March 2026, when Sabato's Crystal Ball still had this race as Likely R. Democrat Bobby Pulido ultimately won the race by nearly 25%.

Further, traders were able to pick up on early vote data that could not be priced into polls or other election models. Take the North Carolina Senate race for instance. The day early voting started on October 15, traders were forecasting a 9.5% margin for Roy Cooper. After traders were pricing in what appeared to be favorable early voting numbers from Democrats, Roy Cooper's projected margin increased to over 15% on the day before the election. Roy Cooper ended up winning by nearly 20%. You can see this trend in this VoteHub graphic posted on October 28.

So what comes next? 

Last month, we launched our international election hub which includes a calendar and map view for all the elections around the world. 14 more countries around the world have elections in the month of November alone. We will continue to improve the international election hub and launch more markets around international elections.

Furthermore, we will start working on our 2028 Presidential election hub which will prominently feature the Who will run for President in 2028, Presidential Dem / Republican nominee, and overall Presidential winner markets. On election night, we saw significant movement in the 2028 nominee markets with Jon Ossoff surging to take a commanding position in the 2028 Democratic Presidential nominee market and Ron DeSantis' odds quadrupling. And if history tells us anything, it's likely that at least 1 candidate could announce they are running for President in 2026, starting the nearly-2 year 2028 Presidential cycle.

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