Russian Duma Election 2026

Russia votes for its State Duma on September 20, 2026. Polymarket carries the only real book on it—five events, $342,193 in twenty-four hours—and the striking thing is that the book does not agree with itself.

Two contracts ask the same question and answer it twenty-eight points apart. Which party will gain most seats prices United Russia at 70.5%. Russia Parliamentary Election Winner, resolving on the same seat count on the same date, prices United Russia at 98.2%. New People sits at 19.8% on the first book and 0.5% on the second.

Nothing in the rules text separates them. This is the widest same-exchange, same-event pricing gap in this catalog.

And the flow is stranger than the prices. On the deeper book, Yabloko took $110,833 at 0.2% and A Just Russia took $87,963 at 0.4%—two parties the market gives a combined six-tenths of one percent, absorbing $198,796 of $308,805, sixty-four percent of the day's volume. United Russia's leg, at 70.5%, took $50,077.

United Russia has held a Duma supermajority since 2016 and Russian elections are not competitive in the sense the word usually carries. The interesting object here is not the outcome. It is a market that prices a foregone conclusion three different ways and puts most of its money on the legs it says cannot happen.

Central Election Commission of Russia.

Left: which party will gain most seats, $308,805 a day, United Russia 70.5%, New People 19.8%, LDPR 5.8%, KPRF 1.6%.

Right: Russia Parliamentary Election Winner, $16,803 a day, United Russia 98.2% and everything else under one percent.

The deeper book is the less confident one. That is the opposite of the usual relationship between liquidity and conviction, and it is worth deciding which way you read it before trusting either number.

Second place is the one genuinely open question and it is priced tightly: the Communist Party at 82.5%, New People at 8.9%, LDPR at 7.8%. But United Russia—a party the same book gives 98.2% to win—carries a 0.8% second-place leg that took $5,011, more than the 82.5% favorite's $4,379.

Third place disagrees with second: New People 41.5%, LDPR 31.5% on zero volume, KPRF 12.5%. Add the KPRF's second and third place legs and the party is 95% to finish in the top three, which is the least controversial claim on the page.

Turnout is a seven-bucket ladder on $342 total. The modal bucket is 50–53% at 37.5%, with a 62%+ tail at 11.6%. Official turnout in 2021 was 51.7%, so the market is pricing a repeat and nothing else.

The two United Russia legs side by side—70.5% against 98.2%—are the cleanest statement of the problem. A trader who believes both books resolve identically has a twenty-eight point spread available and no execution risk beyond Polymarket itself.

That it persists at $325k of combined daily volume says the two books are being traded by people who are not comparing them.

• Whether the 28-point gap closes. Two Polymarket books, one question, 70.5% against 98.2%. Either they resolve differently on some technicality nobody has surfaced, or one of them is badly mispriced with five weeks to run.
• $198,796 on two legs priced at 0.6% combined. Yabloko and A Just Russia are absorbing two-thirds of the volume on this election. Watch whether that is one participant or a crowd—if the prices do not move, it is someone building rather than someone right.
• United Russia's 0.8% second-place leg out-trading the 82.5% favorite. A party cannot plausibly win the most seats at 98.2% and finish second at 0.8% with the second-place book's deepest flow on it. Something in that stack is being used as a hedge rather than a forecast.
• Turnout at $342. Seven buckets, three hundred dollars, and a modal outcome identical to 2021. If any real money arrives here it will be the first informative turnout signal Russia has produced on a prediction market.
• No cross-exchange mirror. Kalshi, Manifold and PredictIt list nothing on the Duma. Every number on this page is Polymarket's alone, which is unusual for an election this large and removes the normal correction mechanism.

Yabloko at 0.2% took $110,833. A Just Russia at 0.4% took $87,963. Together, sixty-four percent of the day's volume on the deepest Russian book, spread across two legs the market prices at six-tenths of a percent combined.

Yabloko has not held a Duma seat since 2003. A Just Russia holds 28 of 450. Neither is a plausible plurality winner and neither book pretends otherwise.

This is the same shape seen this week in Florida ($3.1M on a 1.1% leg), South Carolina (78% of flow on a 12.5% leg) and the BMW Championship (six of ten deepest legs under 3%): in books with a foregone favorite, almost all the volume migrates to the tail. Here it is at its most extreme.