Researchers detect suspicious activity on El-Sayed, Ricketts’ trades at 2026 Midterms

In pushing a progressive platform centred on healthcare reform and economic populism, Abdul El-Sayed made history last week when Michigan voters elected him as the first US senator on record.

On Polymarket, notional volume on the Michigan Senate race eclipsed $13.7 million, with more than $7.9 million on the former Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. In the wake of the historic victory by the epidemiologist, a researcher at Vanderbilt University began monitoring trading patterns on the race as part of a larger initiative on analysing prediction-market activity on the US midterm elections.

As El-Sayed prepares for his move to the nation’s capitol, a team at the Vanderbilt Institute of National Security has scrutinised two oddly-timed, six-figure trades on El-Sayed’s victory over Republican challenger Mike Rogers. Co-led by Brett Goldstein, Special Advisor to the Vanderbilt Chancellor on National Security and Strategic Initiatives, the team also flagged a suspicious trade on a re-election bid by Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts.

“There’s a series of circumstances here that it’s hard to write it off as a random occurrence,” Goldstein told the New York Times, which first reported the story.

The user, according to the Times, also placed large trades on similar markets via Kalshi. While a Polymarket spokeswoman told the Times that it spotted the trades immediately, Kalshi declined comment.

Wee hour activity

About an hour before a New York Times–Siena College poll became public on Halloween, an anonymous Polymarket user placed nearly $200,000 on a victory by Ricketts, a former Nebraska governor. At the time, Ricketts led independent challenger Dan Osborn by six percentage points, by a margin of 49%-43%. Before the poll appeared, the market’s implied probability of a Ricketts victory had rose from about 67% to 73%; shortly after, it jumped to 79%. The anonymous trader, Dubdubdub2, reportedly made more than $77,000 on the transaction.

Before trick-or-treaters showered neighbourhoods on Halloween afternoon, the trader appeared to place two other large transactions in the wee hours of the morning. At 3:27 a.m., he placed a $349,135 trade that El-Sayed would prevail, followed by a separate trade at 5:20 a.m. on a Democrat victory. The user placed the latter, a $273,473 trade, roughly 15 hours before the NY Times-Siena released a new poll on the hotly-contested race. In September, El-Sayed, a former assistant professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University, trailed Democrats on generic ballots by six percent, according to the Times. By 1 Nov., however, the poll captured a stunning reversal, as El-Sayed took a commanding 11-point lead. In total, the trader stood to make about $180,000 if Rogers failed to win.

Much ado about nothing?

Conversely, an on-chain analysis by a company focused on digital assets markets cast doubt on the theory that the user placed the trade after coming into possession of material non-public information. According to theBlock.co, a research firm dedicated to blockchain analysis, the user has an extensive history of placing “large, risky trades.” Moreover, the site noted that the user has a proclivity for engaging in “complex DeFi yield-farming,” which went unreported by The Times.

The practise occurs when deposits crypto assets to generate passive income, rather than letting digital assets sit idle in a wallet. In addition, the user may have placed two large bets on Kalshi after the release of a Siena poll, an author for theBlock in an 8 Nov. article. The same user held onto the trades through Election Day, rather than engage in short-term trading, according to the site, giving credence to the argument that he simply has an appetite for risk.

While El-Sayed not issued a formal statement on the trade, he does not appear to be an ardent supporter of prediction markets — at least when it comes to controversial geopolitical events. Last March, El-Sayed responded to a post on the social media site X, regarding an event contract on nuclear proliferation. The contract on Polymarket’s offshore platform gave users the ability to trade on if a nuclear weapon would be detonated by a certain date this year. Polymarket listed the contract shortly after the US launched an attack on Iran.

“I just thought online gambling was a problem because it rots brains and destroys folks’ lives. Now it’s a national security threat, too!?,” he wrote.

A week after Election Night, it appears that the user won decisively with his trades. With 98% of votes counted in Michigan, El-Sayed leads Rogers by more than 300,000 votes, or a margin of six points. Ricketts also leads by a comfortable margin. In the Cornhusker State, Ricketts leads Osborn by roughly 47,000 votes for a six-point cushion.