Source publication time: November 9, 2026, at 07:06:02 UTC+8. This article summarizes reporting from that date.
Large wagers on US Senate elections prompted questions about whether a prediction-market trader had advance access to unpublished polling. But an analysis by The Block found that the trader’s broader activity—and the timing of some possible bets—complicated that explanation.
The findings did not establish what information the trader used or rule out misconduct. Two academics who reviewed The Block’s evidence said it fit other explanations better, including a wealthy trader making large bets on election outcomes rather than seeking short-term profits from poll releases.
Why the bets attracted attention
The New York Times reported that Vanderbilt University researchers had flagged large, profitable wagers on Polymarket and potentially related activity on Kalshi ahead of Times/Siena polling releases in Nebraska and Michigan.
According to the Times, the Polymarket trader wagered $191,277 on Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts winning re-election in Nebraska. Most of the money was committed early on October 31, roughly an hour before a poll published at 5:05 a.m. Eastern Time showed Ricketts ahead by six points. The trader ultimately earned more than $77,000 on that race.
The same trader wagered $622,608 on a Democratic victory in Michigan’s Senate election, earning more than $180,000 after Abdul El-Sayed won. A Times/Siena poll published at around 7:53 p.m. Eastern Time on November 1 showed El-Sayed leading by 11 points.
The Block matched the Polymarket wagers to an account called dubdubdub2. Its Michigan purchases were the largest daily total by a single account across the 16 Senate races The Block examined back to mid-September, nearly three times the next-largest total.
Brett Goldstein, who co-leads the prediction markets research team at Vanderbilt’s Institute of National Security, told the Times that the circumstances required further investigation. The Times also acknowledged that it was unclear whether the trader possessed inside information.
Possible Kalshi trades came after a poll was public
The Block traced transfers from wallets linked to the Polymarket account to a deposit address forwarding funds to wallets labeled as belonging to Zero Hash, which Kalshi lists among its cryptocurrency deposit providers.
The linked betting wallet sent approximately $1.39 million to that deposit address through October 31. Some deposits were followed within roughly a minute by large Kalshi purchases backing Ricketts or opposing independent candidate Dan Osborn—positions favoring the same outcome.
Those matches were circumstantial, not confirmed account-level links. Kalshi’s public trade data does not identify which account made each trade.
At approximately 5:15 a.m. Eastern Time on October 31, about 10 minutes after the Nebraska poll appeared, Kalshi recorded roughly $153,000 in purchases backing a Ricketts victory and an Osborn defeat. The Block said these could also have belonged to the trader, but the attribution was weaker: they occurred about 50 minutes after a $250,000 deposit, which could have funded other markets.
If the trader made those purchases, continuing to buy after publication would support the interpretation that the trader was betting on the election result rather than simply exploiting a poll-driven price move. It would not, however, exclude prior access to the poll.
The trader also held the Polymarket positions through the election instead of taking profits immediately after the polls appeared. The Michigan wagers were placed while polling was still underway, a detail the Times acknowledged.
A broader record of large, risky positions
The Block’s wallet review found that substantial bets were not unusual for this trader. Earlier Polymarket positions included approximately $1.05 million backing Zohran Mamdani in the 2025 New York City mayoral election, $102,000 opposing Andrew Cuomo in that race and $131,000 opposing a San Francisco 49ers victory in the 2026 Super Bowl. All three were held until settlement.
Linked wallets also had extensive decentralized-finance activity, including lending and yield strategies involving Aave and Pendle. Immediately before the election wagers, the betting wallet lost about $783,000 over 26 hours on Hyperliquid, including fees and funding costs, according to account records cited by The Block.
Vincent Grégoire, a finance professor at HEC Montréal whose research includes insider trading, described the history as consistent with a wealthy individual or small trading firm making large wagers across platforms.
Barnard College economics professor Rajiv Sethi said the activity looked like directional election bets. He allowed that private surveys or other nonpublic information might have informed them, but said he did not think the Times/Siena polls were the source.
The Block also disputed a separate figure in the Times report concerning the wallet’s October 2024 World Liberty Financial token purchase. Its review put the purchase at about 6% of that month’s WLFI sales, rather than nearly one-third as reported by the Times. The Block said it had asked the newspaper about the discrepancy.
Investigations and oversight context
Polymarket told the Times it had detected the trades immediately and was investigating. Kalshi declined to comment to the newspaper. Spokespeople for the Times and the Siena Research Institute said they took the allegations seriously and planned to review the research.
The Times said employees were prohibited from using unpublished coverage to make investments. ReconMR, which owns the Siena Research Institute, said confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements barred employees from using unpublished data for any purpose.
The Block reported that it had not received responses to its own requests for comment from Polymarket, Kalshi, the Times or Siena by publication.
The scrutiny followed broader US oversight concerns. Both prediction-market platforms had tightened their insider-trading rules earlier in 2026 amid Senate scrutiny. In April, the Justice Department charged US Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke with using classified information about the operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to make about $409,881 on Polymarket. Separately, a former White House teleprompter operator agreed in August to pay $172,000 to settle CFTC charges involving advance knowledge of President Donald Trump’s speeches and Kalshi mention markets.
Those separate cases do not establish wrongdoing by the Senate-election trader. As Grégoire emphasized, trading data alone cannot determine who traded on what information, and the institutions involved could reasonably investigate whether their processes were compromised.