Markets split on Virginia Attorney General race

Even as final polls show Democrat Jay Jones inching ahead in Virginia’s attorney general race, Kalshi traders aren’t convinced. Contracts currently give incumbent Jason Miyares a 58% chance of winning, compared with 47% for Jones, signaling that traders see the race as too close to call in the aftermath of Jones’s text-message scandal.

That cautious view contrasts sharply with multiple surveys published over the last 48 hours. A Newsweek report on Tuesday noted that Jones led Miyares by two points in three separate polls, each within the margin of error, while a New York Post story called his narrow advantage “shocking” given revelations that he had once joked in text messages about killing a political rival.

Those messages, sent years before his statewide run, turned the contest into one of the most unpredictable of the 2025 cycle. Yet with turnout surging and Democrats leading comfortably in the governor’s race, traders appear to be discounting Jones’s late polling bounce. Kalshi pricing suggests that markets expect the scandal to have a lingering impact on swing voters and to cap Democratic gains down the ballot.

The tension between optimism in polls and skepticism in markets extends beyond the attorney general contest. The Kalshi market on whether Democrats will sweep all three of Virginia’s statewide elections has slipped seven points to 47%, suggesting traders are backing a mixed result rather than a uniform blue wave.

The shift coincides with renewed strength for Miyares on Kalshi, whose contract volumes topped $1 million on Election Day. Even as gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger remains a clear favorite, the AG market is acting as a brake on sweep sentiment.

Traders seem to be factoring in the same dynamic that hurt Democrats in past Virginia off-years: strong turnout in blue urban centers offset by Republican discipline in exurban counties. If Miyares holds, it would mark the GOP’s only statewide office, a symbolic win in a state that has trended left for over a decade.

A third Kalshi market, “When will the AP call the Virginia Attorney General election?”, shows traders anticipating a relatively quick verdict. As of Tuesday afternoon, 75% of contracts predicted the race would be called before 11:00 p.m. ET, while only 10% expect it to remain unresolved past midnight.

That outlook hints at confidence that the outcome will be clear rather than recount-tight, and may also reflect the concentration of votes in major population centers that typically report early.

The attorney general’s race is a test of whether Virginia’s swing-state instincts have truly faded, or if scandal and incumbency still carry weight in an era of partisan polarization. For markets, it’s also a reminder of how prediction traders often interpret late polling volatility: not as a shift in probability, but as noise around a stable base case.

If Jones defies expectations and wins, it would mark a rare instance where every major poll outperformed the market consensus. But if Miyares holds on, it will reinforce Kalshi’s record of reading state-level races more conservatively than traditional pollsters.

Kalshi markets now forecast:

Traders appear to be signaling that while Virginia remains competitive, the attorney general’s race is the weak link in Democrats’ statewide hopes, an election where polls see a toss-up, but markets still lean red.

Sources: Newsweek, Nov. 4, 2025; New York Post, Nov. 3, 2025.
Image Source: Adnan Masri

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