Google Shows Betting Markets in Half of Midterm Forecast Searches, Even in Ban States

LONDON, October 20, 2026. Ask Google who will win the Senate this November, and there’s an even chance a betting market is part of the answer. A study by CasinoReviews.net checked 140 Google results pages across 14 US cities and found Polymarket or Kalshi on page one for half of ordinary forecast searches such as “election forecast” and “midterm polls.” The platforms turned up in all eight cities tested in states where state law bans betting on elections.

The laws leave no clear mark on what people search for either. Across 46 states, interest in Polymarket and Kalshi, measured against interest in the 2026 elections, showed no consistent difference between states that ban election betting and states with no such law.

The findings come ahead of Election Day, as states, courts and federal regulators argue over who gets to police prediction markets. Twenty-four states ban election betting outright, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), yet federally regulated prediction markets offer election contracts across the country, and whether state law reaches them is still being fought out in court.

Key Findings

• Half of everyday forecast searches showed a betting platform. On 112 mobile results pages for searches like “2026 midterm elections predictions” and “could the Senate flip in 2026,” 50% showed Polymarket or Kalshi on page one. Polymarket accounted for nearly all of them, usually around the fourth organic result.
• State law made no consistent difference to search results or interest. Platforms appeared for forecast searches in all eight ban-state cities tested: Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Charlotte, Las Vegas and Chicago. Google Trends data across 46 states also showed no consistent difference in interest between states that ban election betting and states with no such law.
• Kalshi dominated odds searches, while Polymarket appeared more often in forecasts. Kalshi appeared on all 28 results pages for “senate odds” and “midterm odds” and ranked first on half of them, but on only 6% of forecast pages. Kalshi also reached Google’s Top Stories carousel 18 times through its own news pages. Polymarket never did.
• About 1 in 120 searches mentioning the midterm elections uses betting or odds language. Prediction and forecast searches without betting language outnumber them nearly nine to one, which is where Google’s choice of results matters most.

“Most people who search for midterm predictions aren’t looking to place a bet. They want to know who’s going to win”, said Nikoleta Kuncheva, lead researcher and project manager at CasinoReviews.net. “For half of those searches, Google answers with a betting market, and it does that in Houston and Atlanta as well as in Los Angeles and Miami. A state can make election betting a crime, but nothing in the search results tells a voter that.”

Legal Context and Local Angles

At least 32 states restrict betting on elections in some way, and 24 of them ban it outright, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most of those laws were written long before online prediction markets existed. Federally regulated platforms argue that state gambling laws don’t apply to them, and states and courts are still testing that argument.

State	What state law says	Local angle
Arizona	Blanket ban on election betting	The attorney general has filed criminal charges against Kalshi that include contracts on Arizona’s 2026 races.
Wisconsin	A person who bets on an election can lose the right to vote in it	The Wisconsin Elections Commission warned voters in 2026 that election prediction markets could put their vote at risk.
New York	A person who bets on an election can lose the right to vote in it	New York has the highest betting-platform search index of any state in the study except Massachusetts and DC.
Utah	A candidate who bets on their own race commits a third-degree felony	Utah’s betting-platform search index sits above the national middle, at 121 per 100 election searches.
Iowa	Blanket ban on election betting	The University of Iowa still runs the Iowa Electronic Markets, a legal academic market on election outcomes.
Texas	Blanket ban on election betting	Polymarket appeared on Houston results pages for most forecast searches in the re-check, and “texas senate polymarket” is among the platform’s top related searches.
Michigan	Blanket ban on election betting	The Michigan Senate race leads related searches for both Polymarket and Kalshi, and Michigan’s search index is 134.

Methodology

Google results audit. Researchers checked 10 searches in each of 14 cities on October 15 and 16, 2026, using location-specific Google settings, mobile view and a logged-out browser. Eight searches were everyday forecast questions taken from the highest-volume midterm searches in Ahrefs. Two were odds searches used as controls. Cities covered eight ban states, two partial-ban states and four states with no election-betting statute. A same-day re-check of 30 pages in three cities matched the first check on 63% of pages, below the study’s preset 80% threshold, so the audit is not used to compare states.

Google Trends. The study compared search interest in Polymarket and Kalshi with interest in the “2026 United States elections” topic in each state, using the News category to filter out sports-betting searches. Data covers August 1 to October 11, 2026, averaged across four samples taken October 12 to 19. Five states with too little data were excluded. States were grouped by election-betting law using NCSL’s table, updated August 21, 2026. The main test pointed to slightly lower interest in ban states, but that result did not hold in robustness checks set before the analysis, so the study reports no consistent difference.

Search volume. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Matching terms for “midterm elections” in the US, covering 10,092 keywords and 398,480 average monthly searches, exported October 15, 2026. Searches using betting or odds language make up 0.83%. Excluding searches that use only the word “odds,” the share is 0.63%.

Limitations. Google Trends measures relative search interest, not betting activity. Ahrefs volumes are modelled estimates. The legal reach of state election-betting laws over federally regulated platforms is unsettled, and NCSL’s table is not legal advice. Full data, the state table and results-page screenshots are available on request.

Media contact: media@casinoreviews.net

About CasinoReviews.net: CasinoReviews.net is a media publisher and affiliate platform specialising in online casino reviews and independent analysis of the gambling industry. Alongside its reviews, the site publishes daily news coverage and data-led research on trending gambling topics.

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