Kalshi traders cut Spencer Pratt runoff odds from 80% to 1% as late ballots reshape LA mayor race
Kalshi traders priced Spencer Pratt at 80% to advance to the Los Angeles mayoral runoff on June 1, according to a post by Kyle Kuzma on X. The odds fell to 64% by June 2, 54% by June 3, 23% by June 5, and finally to 1% by June 8 as late-counted ballots trended toward Councilmember Nithya Raman. A Kalshi post on May 28 had shown incumbent Karen Bass's re-election odds dropping 10% overnight while Raman gained ground. By June 8, traders were pricing an 18% probability that Pratt would concede before June 15, and DeFi Rate reported that prediction markets had overestimated his early surge before vote counts pushed him to third place behind Bass and Raman.
Kalshi's 79-point swing in Pratt's odds over eight days exposes how political event contracts with thin liquidity can amplify early-vote misreads into sustained pricing errors.
Traders now face execution risk on celebrity-driven markets where retail attention outpaces order-book depth. The correction also puts Kalshi's own marketing of live odds under sharper scrutiny after a related paid-promotion dispute.
Kalshi's LA mayor pricing collapse joins a recent Kalshi and Polymarket boosted LA election fraud posts controversy as the platform's political-marketing strategy draws scrutiny alongside its market accuracy.