Fieldwork that shapes the wager
In the weeks before the midterms, the group split up in Maine and went door to door. David Bensoussan worked Bangor, while Douglas Campbell flew into Portland with four other traders. The goal was simple: ask voters what was really on their minds.
That legwork shifted how they bet. Bensoussan noticed backers of Republican Susan Collins were less inclined to talk, which cooled him on wagering in that race and made him more skeptical of polling that generally had Democrat Troy Jackson ahead. He stayed away. Campbell, by contrast, left Maine more confident in his Jackson position while also hedging with a handful of Republicans in other states he thought the market had underpriced.
Inside the sharps' workflow
The crew met in Poly Alpha, an invite-only chat where self-described sharps aim to earn their income from prediction markets. Lately, the back-and-forth has zeroed in on politics and what their on-the-ground research is really saying.
As the vote neared, Campbell said they had shifted into a heavier analytics push. "This now is full-on data analytics mode," he said. And in his view, the focus is core to the craft: "Elections are kind of the bread and butter for any prediction market trader." After their trips, they coordinated online to review polling and early-voter data from Brazil, Israel and Texas, marrying field notes with fresh numbers.
Who is making money - and how
Campbell, 46, previously built election models for the Democratic National Committee. On Kalshi he goes by AlexanderHam, and his profile lists him as the sixth most-profitable election trader there, with more than $800,000 in profits. Not every call lands - he took a $10,000 loss around the recent Israeli election.
Bensoussan, 49, is a property manager originally from France, and he mainly operates on Polymarket under the handle Scottilicious. He has booked more than $1.5 million in profits and is carrying a large, relatively low-risk position on Democrats taking the House. On his main account, more than $280,000 is tied to a bet he placed when the odds were below 80 percent, a market that later climbed to about 94 percent.
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He got into prediction markets in 2024 while caring for his ailing father in France and was doing well enough to hire a tenant from one of his Los Angeles buildings, 27-year-old Jérémy Krief, to help with research and trading. Krief relies on Claude to pull data from websites, including state government pages and TV news outlets, while he combs through media globally. The trips matter too, Krief said, because "the polls sometimes doesn't reveal the truth, and you have to more interview people, understand their feeling, understand the economics reality, and sometimes the polls doesn't show it."
Earlier this year, Bensoussan and Krief flew to Portugal and canvassed Uber drivers, retirees and cafe regulars ahead of the Portuguese presidential election. The travel tab ran nearly $10,000, but they cleared more than $80,000 on that vote across Kalshi and Polymarket.
Market risk, platform heat, and your portfolio
Prediction markets have earned a reputation as places where many Americans lose money on longshots that can strain finances. That dynamic creates room for a smaller slice of sharps - and sometimes Wall Street high frequency trading outfits - to take the other side and profit. The ecosystem is broader than politics: a former screenwriter has turned into a whale in inflation markets, and professional gamblers make a living from sports betting, which accounts for most trading on both platforms.
This week, Polymarket launched a probe of trades whose timing raised red flags around the Israeli election, coming after prior insider-trading controversies. Against that backdrop, the methods on display here are straightforward: door-knocking, data scraping, and a private chat to stress-test theses.
One more data point to close the loop. This Tuesday, Bensoussan will be in Chicago for a panel at a financial conference, then he plans to hustle back to his Airbnb to watch exit polls and keep an eye on remaining positions. "It's like full adrenaline right now," he said. "My mind is racing at 120 miles an hour."
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