Kalshi has launched the American Power Index, a non-tradable measure designed to track which US political party holds more power in Washington.
The index combines current control of the White House, Senate and House with Kalshi’s market-based forecasts on future electoral outcomes.
According to Axios, the sitting president’s party accounts for 18% of the index, Senate control for 16% and House control for 17%, with further weighting tied to victory margins and shutdown risk.
The first reading puts Republicans 2.5 points ahead of Democrats.
The launch extends Kalshi’s focus on politics, a category that has become central to the wider prediction-market debate in the US.
Kalshi operates as a federally regulated prediction market, but political and event-based contracts have continued to draw attention from lawmakers, gambling regulators and market observers.
Several bills targeting prediction markets have been introduced in Congress this year.
One recent proposal would prohibit the use of campaign funds for prediction market betting, while other measures have focused on sports-related contracts and the boundary between federally regulated event markets and state-regulated gambling.
The scrutiny has intensified following enforcement cases involving alleged misuse of non-public information. In April, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) charged a soldier with using classified information to make more than $400,000 on Polymarket contracts tied to an operation involving Nicolás Maduro.
Separately, US prosecutors charged a Google employee this week with using confidential search data to profit from Polymarket bets.
Kalshi’s index also arrives as hedge funds and other financial institutions look more closely at prediction markets as a source of real-time political and economic signals.
For investors, a measure of political control could be used alongside equity, bond or sector data to assess possible links between policy risk and market performance.
The company’s own position is that market prices can provide faster signals than polling or commentary, though research on political prediction markets has produced mixed findings.
Studies of 2024 election markets found strong accuracy in some cases, while also raising questions about liquidity, market efficiency and vulnerability to information advantages.
Earlier this month, Kalshi made a two-year, $2m investment in the National Council on Problem Gambling to support trader health and safety, becoming the organization’s first financial services and trading member.
The American Power Index is not available for trading and is intended as an informational measure based on Kalshi market data
