The race to be the Colorado Democratic governor nominee took an interesting turn last week, and prediction markets are now leaning hard toward Attorney General Phil Weiser over Sen. Michael Bennet.
Last week, Bennet held a 73% chance to win on Kalshi before it flipped late in the week, with Weiser now at 78% heading into Tuesday’s election.
That shift lines up with a new poll released last week showing Weiser ahead by 9 points. It also reflects a broader late-campaign move toward the more progressive lane in a cycle where New York’s left-flank wins are clearly resonating.
Governor race tightens
As a sitting Senator, Bennet has campaigned nearly like an incumbent in the race. And the markets were treating him as such. The flip last week occurred on both Kalshi and Polymarket, which have volumes of $663,000 and $432,000, respectively.
That makes this feel less like a runaway and more like a race where traders finally decided the momentum had gone Weiser’s way at the exact moment the polls confirmed it.
The ideological split is part of the story too. Weiser has positioned himself to the left of Bennet, which gives him a cleaner lane in the kind of energized Democratic primary electorate that has been rewarding more progressive candidates in other states.
The New York results only make that case stronger, because they showed how quickly a disciplined left coalition can beat a more establishment-friendly brand.
Republican lane and November
The Republican primary is much less interesting on its face, with Victor Marx, a former U.S. Marine and evangelical minister, priced around the 90% range and no real sign of a serious intraparty fight.
The general election is where the real deadness shows up, because markets are pricing in the Democrats in the 90s, and polls still have them favored by roughly 12 points. That means Colorado looks like a state where the November outcome is already fairly well baked in, even if the nomination fights are giving traders something to watch now.
That also keeps the governor’s primary from being just a local story. If Weiser wins, the November race becomes a test of whether Democrats can hold a relatively safe seat while still surfacing a more progressive nominee.
If Bennet pulls it back, it suggests the market may have moved too quickly on the idea that the leftward shift is fully decisive.
Colorado Senate primary
Incumbent Sen. John Hickenlooper has pulled away from the field and is now also sitting comfortably in the 90s after a stretch earlier in the year when Julie Gonzales appeared to have a real path to making it interesting.
Traders have clearly decided that former Governor Hickenlooper’s institutional edge and name recognition are enough to separate him from the pack.
That race also looks locked for November, which makes the primary the only real decision point. The general election is not shaping up as a true contest, so the prediction markets are mostly identifying the nominee rather than handicapping control of the seat.
