Kalshi
PolymarketOhio's 1st District: Greg Landsman Held His Seat by More Than the Market Had Dared to Price
Greg Landsman won Ohio's 1st District race. The Associated Press projected the Democratic incumbent the winner over Republican Eric Conroy on election night, as the Dayton Daily News reported, and NBC News also projected him the winner. With every Election Day precinct reporting, the Ohio Secretary of State's unofficial results, read at 9:52 a.m. Eastern on November 5, 2026, gave Landsman 176,453 votes to Conroy's 139,343, a margin of 37,110, with Libertarian Nathan Weise at 8,675. The venues had priced that hold going in: on November 2, 2026, Polymarket had the Democratic contract at 95% against Kalshi's 96%, and Kalshi and Polymarket both had the Republican contract at 5%, which made Landsman roughly a 19-in-20 favorite. On November 4, 2026 both venues quoted the Democratic contract at 100%. The count is unofficial until the Secretary of State certifies it after the official canvass.
The market treats Greg Landsman's incumbency and his money as the deciding facts in Ohio's 1st Congressional District, and the closing board shows the price rests on that: the venues made the Democrat a heavy favorite to hold a seat whose 2026 lines voted narrowly for Donald Trump in 2024. That was a firmer call than any of the four major forecasters made, though all four moved toward Landsman during the fall, and it was an Ohio question because the 1st was contested on a new congressional map, with every precinct in Warren County and part of Hamilton County voting in it on Tuesday, November 3, 2026. The live board above carries the final Ohio 1st District odds from Kalshi and Polymarket.
Why the Ohio 1st District Price Sat With the Incumbent
The incumbent was the anchor. The Clerk of the House member list, published October 1, 2026, records Greg Landsman, a Democrat, as the member for the 1st District, with Cincinnati as his listed home town, elected November 5, 2024 and sworn in January 3, 2025; the same record shows he also served in the previous Congress. The ballot was settled. The Hamilton County Board of Elections' general-election candidate list shows Landsman (Democratic) and Eric Conroy (Republican) with their candidacies certified for the general election, and Nathan Weise certified to fill the Libertarian vacancy on the ballot. The Warren County Board of Elections' election notice lists the race for "All Precincts" in that county.
The lines are the reason this is a race at all. Ballotpedia, citing The Downballot, puts the 2024 presidential vote inside the 2026 district at 50.8 for Trump and 48.2 for Kamala Harris, and gives it a Cook Partisan Voter Index of R+1. Wikipedia's account of the redistricting says the October 2025 deal on the Ohio Redistricting Commission made the 1st and the 9th more Republican-friendly, and the commission passed the map on October 31, 2025. Read alone, that is the profile of a seat either party could win.
What carried the price was the incumbent's head start, and the money shows how much of it he has spent. The Federal Election Commission's candidate totals through the pre-general report, which closed on October 14, 2026, show Landsman with about $5.66M raised in the cycle and about $503K in cash, against about $2.37M raised and about $293K in cash for Conroy, whose total includes about $288K he lent his own campaign. Two weeks earlier, on the September 30, 2026 committee reports, Landsman had about $1.50M on hand and Conroy about $303K. The five-to-one cash edge of September became less than two to one by mid-October because Landsman spent about a million dollars in the first two weeks of the month, which is the shape of a campaign buying its closing weeks of advertising rather than one sitting on a lead.
The polls pointed the same way as the price. A RedBox Research survey for A Fight Worth Having, a super PAC, taken October 20 to 23, 2026 among 821 likely voters with a margin of error of 4.3 points and released October 25, had Landsman at 48 and Conroy at 39, with Weise at 3. Quantus Insights, in a survey of 561 likely voters taken October 19 to 21, 2026, had Landsman at 47 and Conroy at 42, by Wikipedia's polling table. The one Republican-sponsored poll listed, from Torchlight Strategies for the Conroy campaign, taken September 29 to October 2, 2026, had Landsman ahead by about two points.
At 6:38 p.m. Eastern on November 2, 2026, Polymarket had the Democratic contract at 95% against Kalshi's 96%, and Kalshi and Polymarket both had the Republican contract at 5%. That made Landsman roughly a 19-in-20 favorite on the cheaper venue. On October 12, 2026 Kalshi had the Democratic side at 87%, the cheapest Yes on that side, so the venues spent the second half of October treating the race as less contested, not more, and held near 95% from October 23 to the vote.
The trading behind the price was heavy and lopsided. Kalshi had matched about 174,100 contracts on the district by November 2, 2026, up from about 115,800 on October 23, and about 30,600 of them changed hands in the 24 hours before the November 2 read; Polymarket had about $67.5K, each venue counted in its own unit. The Republican side had drawn far more of Kalshi's contracts than the Democratic side, about 123,400 against 50,700, which says traders kept buying the long shot cheaply without moving the price toward it.
The forecasters agreed on the direction and differed on the distance. In Wikipedia's ratings table, the Cook Political Report has had the race at Likely Democratic since October 16, Sabato's Crystal Ball since October 20 and Decision Desk HQ since September 25, while Inside Elections moved from Tilt to Lean Democratic on October 29, 2026; the rating tables 270toWin carried on November 2 show the same Likely calls from Cook and Sabato. A year ago the picture was different, with Cook, Sabato and Inside Elections all at Toss-up in November 2025 by Ballotpedia's rating history. The market's price sat beyond even the most confident of the four, which meant the venues were paying for more certainty than any rater would sign; the unofficial margin of about 11.4 points was wider than either October poll had shown.
The Case Against the Ohio 1st District Read
The strongest case against the market before the vote was the map and the source of the best polls. A Trump-carried district with an R+1 index is not a seat a Democrat usually holds at 19-in-20, and the nine-point RedBox lead comes from a pollster run by a Democratic-aligned super PAC, while the one campaign poll from the other side had the race at two points. A reader who held that view would say that Inside Elections still stopped at Lean Democratic, that Landsman spent down his cash edge rather than banking it, and that a Libertarian on the ballot makes the margin harder to read rather than easier. On that reading the venues were pricing the incumbent's résumé, and the honest number was closer to what the raters printed: an edge, not a settled seat. The count went past the price rather than falling short of it, with Landsman ahead by about 11.4 points in the unofficial results. What the case still gets right is that an R+1 seat on these lines will be contested again, and one strong Democratic year does not settle how it leans.
What Changes the Ohio 1st District Read
The read would be wrong now only if the official count reversed the unofficial one, and a margin of 37,110 votes leaves that a long way off. The dated, observable steps still ahead:
• Outstanding ballots: provisional ballots, and overseas and military ballots that arrive by mail within four days of Election Day, are counted in the official canvass; on November 5, 2026 the Secretary of State listed 98,369 provisional and 3,779 overseas and military ballots outstanding statewide, spread across all fifteen districts.
• The canvass: the Secretary of State says the official canvass is completed about three weeks after the election and that results are unofficial until it certifies them; no certification date is published on the results page.
• A recount: Ohio Revised Code 3515.011 orders an automatic recount in a district race only when the margin is under one-half of one percent of the total vote, and the unofficial margin here is about 11.4 points.
• Settlement: Polymarket resolves on a consensus of credible reporting about the winner's party; Kalshi pays on the party of the member sworn in for the term beginning in 2027, lists an expected expiration of January 4, 2027, and allows accelerated determination on a consensus media projection.
When the Ohio 1st District Market Resolves
The market pays on the party that wins the seat. Kalshi runs it on its HOUSEOH1-26 contracts and resolves the Democratic one Yes if the House member sworn in for OH-01 for the term beginning in 2027 is a member of the Democratic Party, the Republican one on the same test for the Republican Party. Kalshi lists an expected expiration of January 4, 2027 and a latest expiration of November 3, 2027, and its contract is eligible for accelerated determination once a consensus of media organizations projects the winner. Kalshi's House terms define that consensus as at least four of eight named news organizations calling the race, with none contradicting the call. Kalshi did not wait for the swearing-in: it settled both OH-01 contracts on that early clause at 10:53 p.m. Eastern on November 3, 2026, the Democratic one at Yes. Polymarket resolves according to the party of the candidate who wins the OH-01 seat in the November 3, 2026 election, as indicated by a consensus of credible reporting, and falls back on the official results reported by the Federal Election Commission if there is ambiguity. Party is the ballot-listed affiliation; a winner with no Democratic or Republican label is assigned the party the winner most recently said they would caucus with.
The two rules run on different clocks. Polymarket can settle within days of November 3, 2026 once reporting agrees, while Kalshi's contract formally waits for the member sworn in for the term beginning in 2027 unless a media consensus triggers its early-determination clause first, as it did here. In a race called on election night that difference only changes when the books close; in one close enough to wait for the official canvass, the two venues can settle weeks apart on the same result. Weise's place on the ballot matters only at the margin: neither venue pays a Libertarian outcome on its two party contracts.
Related Ohio 1st District and House Markets
The Ohio 9th District was the closest comparison on the new map: another Democratic incumbent defending a Trump-carried seat, which the venues priced far less confidently than the 1st. The Ohio 7th District ran the other way, a Republican incumbent the venues expected to lose. Hamilton County voters also chose in the Ohio 8th District, and the Ohio 15th District was the closest of the Republican-held seats; each page now carries its own count. At the top of the same ballot, the Ohio Senate special election and the Ohio governor's race tested the same voters statewide, and every race on the ballot is on the elections hub.
