2026-08-12T19:50:16.610Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/politics/kalshi-wisconsin-michigan-prediction
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连续两周的初选结果给摇摆州的进步派候选人带来了接连两次冲击，也给关注政坛的人们上了重要一课：
政坛局势纷繁复杂！
密歇根州和威斯康星州都几乎没有高质量民调，显示进步派候选人大幅领先的民调平均值，在很大程度上是由党派民调推动的。预测市场的赌徒们也跟风押注，全力支持这些候选人。两者共同制造了初选日前夕胜券在握的假象。
但实际选民的投票结果差距极小。
根据预测网站Kalshi的数据，民主党社会主义者、州议员弗朗西斯卡·洪在威斯康星州州长民主党初选中，直到周二初选当天都还有95%的获胜概率。（CNN与Kalshi有合作关系，使用其数据报道重大事件。但CNN编辑人员不得使用预测市场。）其他预测平台包括Polymarket，也同样看好洪。
最终洪以极其微弱的差距输给了戴维·克劳利——这位建制派候选人、密尔沃基县行政长官，令人难以置信的是，他曾退出竞选随后又重新参选。截至周三上午，两人的票数差距不足5000票，且两人的得票率都未达到40%。另外两位知名候选人——曼德拉·巴恩斯和萨拉·罗德里格斯——在选举日前退出了竞选，但为时已晚，名字仍留在选票上，两人合计获得了约8%的总票数。
美国东部时间当晚9点左右，结果已经显示选举形势胶着，Kalshi平台的交易员开始预测克劳利将获胜。赔率整夜波动。CNN直到美国东部时间凌晨3点才宣布克劳利获胜。
一周前在密歇根州，另一位杰出的进步派候选人阿卜杜勒·埃尔赛义德看起来胜券在握，近期民调显示他领先。这些民调都未达到CNN的报道标准，但可能影响了预测网站上的赌徒。根据Kalshi的市场数据，选举前夕他的获胜概率超过97%。计票期间他的赔率从未低于94%。
埃尔赛义德最终获胜，但得票率不足49%，仅比温和派对手领先一个百分点。
在这两起案例中，Kalshi平台赌徒们近乎确定的判断，很可能是由显示洪和埃尔赛义德领先的民调推动的。但在这两起案例中，最新的民调大多是由党派机构开展的。在缺乏更高质量民调的情况下，“氛围”占据了主导，助长了社交媒体上的回声室效应，尤其是让进步派候选人获得了一种势头感。
在威斯康星州，最近一次符合CNN标准的独立民调是由马凯特大学在7月底开展的。在该民调中，洪确实以两位数的优势领先，在表示会参加该州民主党初选的登记选民中支持率达46%。
重要的是，当时竞选仍处于变动之中。民主党建制派尚未就洪问题敲响警钟，也未团结在克劳利周围。
开展该马凯特民调时，约三分之一的选民尚未确定自己的选择。巴恩斯在民调中位居第二，在民调发布仅一天后就退出了竞选。此外，在候选人不断变动的情况下，准确开展民调本身就很困难。
最终获胜者克劳利也是最近才重新参选的。而公众对洪一些更具争议性的过往立场的审查才刚刚开始。
“民调有时会告诉你，竞选存在很大的不确定性和转变空间，”CNN民调编辑阿里尔·爱德华兹-莱维说道。
换句话说，在开展最后一次高质量民调时，竞选仍在激烈进行中。
洪在预测市场上有95%的获胜概率，这绝不意味着她将获得95%的选票或接近这一比例。这意味着大多数赌徒根据他们所看到的信息——民调、其他近期选举的趋势、他们对候选人魅力的判断以及其他一切影响“群体智慧”的因素——认为她会获胜。
除了这些局限性之外，当Polymarket和Kalshi的高管将其产品标榜为“真理机器”时，实际情况却要微妙得多，这反而可能起到反效果。
Kalshi的创始人表示，受青睐的候选人偶尔落选，其实是该平台的一个特点。
“在‘预测市场搞错了’的头条新闻出炉之前：5%的概率并不意味着不会发生。这意味着它每20次才会发生一次。如果5%概率的候选人从未获胜，那市场就出问题了，”Kalshi联合创始人塔里克·曼苏尔在X平台上写道。
事实上，Kalshi认为这是一个可借鉴的教训。
“在这个日益缺乏细致思考的世界里，教会人们用概率思维思考，是Kalshi最重要的影响之一，”Kalshi发言人杰克·萨奇周三对CNN表示。Polymarket拒绝置评。
密歇根州和威斯康星州是近期出现最引人注目的民调预测失误的地区之一，民调专家们也一致认为，这两个州的民调尤其难做。这两个州的选民都被证明是坚定的摇摆选民，且两州都不实行党派选民登记，这使得改进现代民调的选民档案数据建模工作变得困难。
这一切都意味着，高质量民调的数量对于判断我们对选情的信心有多重要，尤其是在越来越少的新闻机构开展民调的当下。CNN不依赖任何单一民调，但会尽可能计算民调平均值——本质上是对符合其标准的民调进行平均——以评估总统支持率，以及在选举临近时对重大竞选活动进行评估。
展望11月的选举，看待民调时应关注其确实能说明的问题，而非其无法说明的内容。CNN最近由SSRS开展的一项民调显示，在即将到来的11月中期选举中，选民以8个百分点的优势更支持民主党。但这一数据的参考价值有限，因为选民不会笼统地为共和党或民主党投票；他们会在特定的选举中为特定的候选人投票。许多州的国会众议院席位也被杰里曼德，以利于某一党派，将政见相似的选民塞进特定选区。
过去两周的经历让我们明白，11月的选举仍遥遥无期，竞选势头可能随时转变。
未来将会有大量指向不同方向的民调，其中很多都是由带有党派议程的机构开展的。
在Kalshi的预测市场上，民主党掌控众议院的赔率整个夏天都在上升，目前已超过85%，这是相当高的置信度，但也给共和党留下了大量翻盘空间。根据Kalshi的赔率，共和党保住众议院多数席位的概率，实际上比克劳利赢得威斯康星州州长民主党初选的概率还要高。请务必牢记这些数字的含义：那些下注的人认为，押注民主党获胜是更稳妥的选择。在参议院方面，两党赢得控制权的赔率大致相当。
这些预测市场是有趣的工具，但它们的准确性完全取决于主流观点。
CNN的马歇尔·科恩对本文亦有贡献。
Why the ‘wisdom of crowds’ is getting some primaries wrong
2026-08-12T19:50:16.610Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/politics/kalshi-wisconsin-michigan-prediction
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
Two successive weeks of primaries brought two successive shocks for progressive candidates in purple states and carry an important lesson for people watching politics:
It’s noisy out there!
With little high-quality polling in either Michigan or Wisconsin, polling averages showing big leads for progressive candidates were driven largely by partisan polling. And prediction market bettors followed suit, going all-in for those candidates. The two combined to create the mirage of a sure thing ahead of primary day.
But actual voters served up tight margins.
Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist and state assembly member in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor, had a 95% chance of victory up until Tuesday, primary day, according to the prediction site Kalshi. (CNN has a partnership with Kalshi and uses its data to cover major events. But CNN editorial employees are not allowed to use prediction markets.) There are other prediction platforms, including Polymarket, that similarly favored Hong.
Hong ended up losing the race by the tightest of margins to David Crowley, the establishment candidate and Milwaukee County executive who, incredibly,dropped out of the race before rejoining it. As of Wednesday morning, fewer than 5,000 votes separate the two. And neither reached 40% in the race. Two other prominent candidates — Mandela Barnes and Sara Rodriguez — dropped out ahead of Election Day, but not soon enough to remove their names from the ballot, and together won about 8% of the total votes cast.
By around 9 p.m. ET, it was clear the vote was going to be close, and traders on Kalshi were predicting a Crowley victory. The odds see-sawed through the night. CNN did not project a Crowley victory until the 3 a.m. ET hour.
In Michigan a week earlier, another proud progressive, Abdul El-Sayed, seemed like a lock with a lead in recent polls, none of which met CNN’s standards for reporting, but which may have affected bettors on prediction sites. It all led up to a more than 97% chance of victory on primary eve, according to the market on Kalshi. His odds never dropped below 94% as votes were being counted.
El-Sayed ended up winning, but with less than 49% of the vote, just one percentage point ahead of his moderate rival.
In both cases, the near-certainty of bettors on Kalshi was likely fueled by polls that suggested leads for Hong and El-Sayed. But in both cases, the most recent polling had been conducted largely by partisan outfits. In the absence of more high-quality polling, vibes took over and fed the social media echo chamber and a sense of momentum for progressive candidates in particular.
In Wisconsin, the most recent independent poll that met CNN’s standards had been conducted in late July by Marquette University. In that poll, Hong was indeed ahead by double digits, holding 46% support among registered voters who said they would vote in the state’s Democratic primary.
Importantly, the race was still in flux. The Democratic establishment had not yet rung alarm bells about Hong and coalesced around Crowley.
About a third of voters were uncertain about their choice when that Marquette poll was conducted. Barnes held second place in the poll, and dropped out just a day after the poll was released. It’s also hard to accurately poll a race where the candidates keep changing.
The ultimate winner, Crowley, had only recently reentered the race. And public scrutiny of some of Hong’s more controversial previous positions was just getting underway.
“Sometimes what polling tells you is that there’s a lot of uncertainty and room for shifts in a race,” said CNN’s polling editor, Ariel Edwards-Levy.
In other words, the campaign was still very much underway when the last high quality polling was done.
The fact that Hong had a 95% chance of winning on prediction markets never meant that she was going to get 95% of the vote or anywhere near it. It meant that most bettors thought she would win based on what they were seeing — polling, trends in other recent elections, their reads on the mojo of the candidates and whatever else fed the wisdom of the crowd.
In addition to those limits, it might not help when Polymarket and Kalshi executives tout their products as “truth machines,” when the reality is far more nuanced.
Kalshi’s founders say favored candidates occasionally losing is actually a feature of the platform.
“Before the ‘prediction markets got it wrong’ headlines roll in: a 5% probability doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It means it should happen 1 in 20 times. If 5% candidates never won, the markets would be broken,” Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour wrote on X.
In fact, Kalshi argues this is a teachable moment.
“Teaching people to think probabilistically in a world that is quickly losing nuance is one of Kalshi’s most important impacts,” Kalshi spokesman Jack Such told CNN on Wednesday. Polymarket declined to comment.
Michigan and Wisconsin are home to some of the highest-profile recent election polling misses, and pollsters agree they are notably places that are hard to poll well. Voters in both states have proved reliably swingy, and neither state has partisan voter registration, which makes difficult the type of modeling on voter file data that improves modern polling.
It all means that the quantity of quality polling is important in knowing how confident to be about the state of any race, particularly as fewer news organizations conduct polls. CNN does not rely on any single poll, but does compute a poll of polls — essentially an average of polls that meet its standards — where possible to assess presidential approval ratings and, as elections approach, for major contests.
Looking ahead to November, polling should be viewed for what it does say rather than what it does not. A recent CNN Poll conducted by SSRS showed that voters preferred Democrats by an 8-point margin heading into the November midterm election. That number is only so helpful, however, since people aren’t voting generally for Republicans or Democrats; they’re voting in a specific race for a specific candidate. House seats in many states have also been gerrymandered to benefit one party or the other, stuffing like-minded voters into certain districts.
What we’ve learned over the past two weeks is that November is still an eternity away and momentum can shift.
There are going to be a lot of polls out there that may point in different directions, a lot of them conducted by groups with a partisan agenda.
On the Kalshi prediction market, the odds of Democrats taking control of the House has been growing all summer and currently sits at more than 85%, which is a high degree of confidence, but also leaves a lot of room for Republicans. They actually have a better chance of holding the House majority than Crowley had of winning the Democratic primary for governor in Wisconsin, under Kalshi’s odds. It’s important to remember what these numbers mean: People who are placing monetary bets think the safer bet is on Democrats winning. In the Senate, the odds of one party or the other winning control are about even.
Those markets are an interesting tool, but they’re only as good as the conventional wisdom.
CNN’s Marshall Cohen contributed to this report
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