The betting odds are shifting in socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani‘s favor.
An Emerson Poll released at 6 a.m. on Monday showed Assemblyman Mamdani at 52% and Andrew Cuomo at 48% in a ranked-choice voting simulation. Later Monday morning on betting platform Kalshi, Cuomo’s odds of winning the Democratic primary fell to 46% — down from more than 70% Sunday night — in a drastic shift.
“It is one of the biggest changes we’ve ever seen on our site — Mamdani went from 18% last Friday [and less than 25% over the weekend] to more than 50%,” Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour told me.
By Monday afternoon, Kalshi showed Cuomo with a slight lead over Mamdani, 58% to 42%, but Mansour called it a “coin flip.”
The exchange, which is regulated by the CFTC, is apolitical, so Mansour is staying out of the fray. But, he told me, this is critical information to be aware of ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
“The early and the young voters have come in much more than previously expected,” Mansour said. “New Yorkers should do with that information what they will.”
Kalshi — the first legal election betting platform in the US in over a century — gives voters more transparency and makes them feel more involved in the process, Mansour argues, because it lets them put their money where their mouths are.
And unlike polls, which take time to conduct and process, betting odds reflect the latest information in real time.
The platform is run like a futures exchange where a marketplace facilitates trades about what could happen. Conventional exchanges, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, process bets about oil or cattle prices. Kalshi does the same thing — just for current events.
Someone who believes in the likelihood of an event — like Cuomo winning — will place a bet, and Kalshi matches them with someone willing to take the other side of the bet.
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Not everyone is surprised by Monday’s turn of events.
Longtime Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf told me it is just one more indication the city has shifted in part because so many residents fled during COVID to more tax-friendly states, “All significantly contested elections are indicative of a demographic shift.”
Kathy Wylde, the longtime president of the non-profit organization Partnership for New York and CEO-whisperer, said she isn’t shocked either.
“I think that the city’s electoral process has been dysfunctional for a while with low voter participation, campaign finance laws, term limits, and the public finance system,” she told me. “We’ve got a million registered voters who can’t participate [because only registered Democrats can vote in the primary] and [registered Independents] are probably among the more rational voters. It is a skewed faction.”
Wylde added, “What is going on is a great argument for open primaries which will hopefully be on the ballot in November.”
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