North Carolina Senate 2026

Roy Cooper prices 92.7% against Republican Michael Whatley at 8.3% on Kalshi; Polymarket says 93/8 and Manifold 89.8/10.2. Nobody disagrees about the outcome.

This workspace used to describe North Carolina as the highest-volume individual Senate contest on prediction markets. It is now the thinnest one we track. Kalshi's book turned over $1,636 in twenty-four hours—against Iowa's $20,324 and Georgia's $19,938. And it is still carrying $1,238,095 of open interest, more than either of them, with $1,137,243 of that sitting on Cooper's leg alone. A book with three-quarters of a million dollars more outstanding than Georgia's and a twelfth of the daily flow.

The order book explains what that depth actually is. Cooper's Yes side shows 2,075,329 contracts resting across thirty-nine price levels—but only 371,316 of them, eighteen percent, sit anywhere between two cents and ninety-eight. The single largest level is 1,344,013 contracts bid at one cent. Whatley's Yes side is worse: 1,571,553 resting, of which 65,951—four percent—are near the middle, and 1,000,909 sit at 1.1¢.

That is not liquidity. It is a penny wall on either tail of a book nobody is trading, and it is the most useful thing this page can show about what "deep" means on an event contract.

Cooper at 92.7% and Whatley at 8.3%—summing to 101%, a one-point overround that survives because $1,636 a day is not enough flow to close it. Polymarket has the same pair within half a point on $172 of volume.

Manifold prices this race three points cheaper than Kalshi—Democrats 89.8% against 92.7%—on zero volume, so read it as an independent prior rather than a disagreement.

Next to it, the number that matters: Senate control is still 53% Republican, on $54,112 a day and $3,866,792 of open interest. North Carolina at 92.7% Democratic and Georgia at 91.4% are both priced as safe holds, and control is priced Republican anyway. The majority is being decided somewhere other than the two races that get written about.

• Whether the penny walls ever come in. Eighty-two percent of Cooper's resting Yes depth and ninety-six percent of Whatley's sit outside two-to-ninety-eight cents. Any narrowing of that distribution would be the first sign real money has come back to this book.
• The $1.14M on Cooper's leg. More outstanding than any single market in this catalog's Senate coverage, on a contract that trades $1,229 a day. Positions this size on a book this thin are hard to exit without moving the price twenty points, which is itself a reason the price does not move.
• The margin ladder's inversion. Democrats 13+ prices 3.6% while 15+ prices 15% and 17+ prices 14%. A superset trading at four times its own subset is arithmetically impossible; the 13+ rung is the only one with any volume ($400) and it is the one that looks broken.
• North Carolina at 2.9% to be the closest race. The lowest of the nine states Kalshi lists, behind Texas at 17% and Alaska at 13%. And the head-to-head against Georgia is a coin flip—Georgia 50%, North Carolina 47%—on which of the two 92% holds is the bigger blowout.
• Whether volume returns after Labor Day. This race had real depth in the spring. If it stays under $2,000 a day into October, the interesting question stops being who wins North Carolina and becomes why a marquee Senate race stopped trading eleven weeks out.
• Cooper's floor. The margin ladder's live rungs put Democrats 5+ at 71% and 9+ at 40%. That is a mid-single-digit to high-single-digit win—comfortable, not a wave, and consistent with a Republican Senate majority overall.

The two order books below are the point of this page.

Cooper's Yes side: 2,075,329 contracts resting, thirty-nine levels, one single level of 1,344,013 bid at a penny. Whatley's Yes side: 1,571,553 resting, 1,000,909 of it at 1.1¢, and just 65,951—four percent—anywhere near the traded price.

Open interest and order-book depth are the two numbers most commonly cited as evidence a prediction market is liquid. This contract has $1.24M of the first and millions of contracts of the second, and it moves $1,636 a day. Both metrics are measuring resting penny bids on outcomes the book prices at nothing.

Two books that price North Carolina against the rest of the map instead of against itself.

Closest Senate race in 2026 ranks the whole board, and North Carolina sits last of the nine states listed, at 2.9%—behind Texas (17%), Alaska (13%), Michigan (11%) and Nebraska (6.8%). Alaska's leg alone took $12,788 of that book's $18,371.

Larger margin of victory: Georgia or North Carolina is a straight coin flip between the two 92% Democratic holds: Georgia 50%, North Carolina 47%, on $205 of volume and $7,800 of open interest. It settles November 3 rather than in January, making it the near-dated way to trade the relationship.