PolymarketNew Jersey's House Count Market Has Already Handed Democrats the 7th, and the Eleventh Seat Is Priced as the Shore
The New Jersey House seats market rests on two of the state's twelve districts, not twelve: it treats the 7th District as already lost to the Republicans who hold it, which makes ten Democratic seats the base case, and it prices an eleventh seat almost exactly as it prices the 2nd District on its own board. The count is a New Jersey question from end to end, settled by the state's twelve House elections on November 3, 2026, and Polymarket is the only exchange pricing it. The live board above carries every bracket.
What the New Jersey House seats market is asking
The contract asks how many of New Jersey's twelve seats in the United States House of Representatives the Democratic Party wins in the 2026 midterm election, and it splits the answer into five brackets: fewer than 8, exactly 8, exactly 9, exactly 10, and 11 or more. A seat counts for the party under which its member is elected. A member who changes party after election day still counts for the party on the ballot, and a winner elected as an independent counts for a party only after joining or announcing for its caucus.
The starting point is the delegation as it stands. The Clerk of the House lists nine Democrats and three Republicans from New Jersey: Jeff Van Drew in the 2nd District, Christopher H. Smith in the 4th and Thomas H. Kean Jr. in the 7th are the Republicans, and every other seat is held by a Democrat. Analilia Mejia holds the 11th after the April 16, 2026 special election, which she won with 81,825 votes to Joe Hathaway's 53,520, per the Division of Elections. That race does not count here: the contract covers the twelve regular elections on November 3, 2026, and excludes special elections held to fill the rest of an unexpired term.
Each bracket is therefore a statement about which districts change hands. Exactly 9 is the delegation as it stands. Exactly 10 is one Republican seat lost and nothing lost on the other side. Eleven or more needs two of the three Republican seats, or more. Exactly 8 and fewer than 8 need Democrats to lose seats they hold now.
Why the New Jersey House seats price centers on ten
The 7th District is the first half of the read. Kean won the seat in 2022 by 159,392 votes to 150,701 and held it in 2024 by 223,331 to 200,025, per the Division of Elections, and his party still out-registers Democrats there, 218,231 to 202,524 on November 1, 2026. The market does not treat those numbers as protection. On November 2, 2026 Kalshi and Polymarket both had Rebecca Bennett's party at 95% in the 7th, and Kalshi had Kean's party at 5%, which is the price of a seat the board has already moved to the Democratic column. The 7th District market page carries that race in full.
Put the 7th on the Democratic side and the delegation count reaches ten, and that is what the count market prices most heavily: on November 2, 2026 Polymarket had exactly 10 at 61%, against 9% for exactly 9. Read together, the two boards say the same thing at slightly different strengths. The 7th District board leaves Kean a 5% path on Kalshi; the count market leaves the status quo a 9% path on Polymarket, a few points more room for a nine-seat delegation than the district board leaves for Kean, on a count book that had drawn $19.7K on Polymarket by November 2, 2026, against about 140,000 Kalshi contracts on the Democratic side of the 7th alone.
The nine Democratic seats are the second half, and the market treats them as settled. On November 2, 2026 Polymarket had the Democratic side of every one of the nine at 97% or higher, from the 1st District, centered on Camden County, to the 12th, an open seat that runs from Mercer County into Middlesex, Somerset and Union. The 8th District has no Republican nominee on the official list of July 27, 2026, and the 9th, the closest Democratic hold of 2024, went to Nellie Pou by 130,514 votes to 117,939. That is why the two brackets below nine carry a single percent each: Polymarket had exactly 8 at 1% and fewer than 8 at 1% on November 2, 2026, which means the market sees almost no route to a Democratic loss anywhere in the state.
Why the New Jersey House seats market prices an eleventh seat as the Shore
The 11 or more bracket is where the read gets specific. Of the two Republican seats left after the 7th, the market treats Smith's 4th District as closed: Polymarket and Kalshi both had his party at 96% on November 2, 2026, and the 4th District market page carries his margins of almost 36 points in 2022 and 2024. That leaves the 2nd, where Van Drew faces Zack Mullock, the Democratic nominee, and Ramon Mora Jr., an independent.
The two boards line up almost exactly. Polymarket had 11 or more at 30% on November 2, 2026, and on the 2nd District market page Kalshi and Polymarket both had Mullock's party at 32% the same day. The market is pricing an eleventh New Jersey seat as the Shore seat and nothing else, which is the structural read of this page: the count is the 7th District taken as done plus the 2nd District taken at its own price.
The 2nd District's price is the one that has moved. Its Democratic side stood at 19% on Polymarket on October 23, 2026 and reached 32% on Kalshi and Polymarket by November 2, which means the Shore seat moved more in ten days than in the two weeks before, when its best Democratic price stayed between 16% and 19% from October 9 to October 23. In between, the New Jersey Monitor reported on October 30 that the Cook Political Report had moved the district from safe Republican to likely Republican, and the New Jersey Globe reported on November 1, from an analysis by the data analyst Umichvoter, that registered Democrats had cast 49,061 advance ballots in the district against 35,199 from registered Republicans, more than their whole 2025 advance vote there.
The case against the New Jersey House seats read
The strongest case against the read is that it leans on early ballots that count party registration, not votes. The Globe's figures sort voters by the party they registered with, and Republicans in New Jersey have relied more on election-day voting than Democrats; the Globe said as much in the same report. In the 2nd District, Republicans still held a registration edge of 23,437 on November 1, 2026, and Van Drew won the seat by 215,946 votes to 153,117 in 2024 and by 139,217 to 94,522 in 2022, both under the district's current lines. The money runs his way too: through October 14 he had about $895K in the bank against Mullock's $105K, per the Monitor's reading of federal filings, and national Democratic Party committees had steered clear of the race.
A reader who holds that view sees Polymarket's 30% on 11 or more as of November 2, 2026 as the market paying for a 2018-style wave on a map that has changed since 2018, which is the core of the objection. The state has sent eleven Democrats to the House once in the last four elections, in 2018, when Van Drew himself won the 2nd as a Democrat under lines that took in parts of Camden and Burlington counties instead of the Ocean County towns the 2021 map added. Since then the count has been 10 in 2020 and 9 in 2022 and 2024.
The other side of the counterread concerns the 7th. If Republican election-day turnout is as strong as Kean's campaign needs, the count lands on nine, and the market prices that at 9% on Polymarket as of November 2, 2026, which is the bracket that wins if the early vote proves to be timing rather than a shift.
What changes the New Jersey House seats read
The read is wrong if the 7th District stays Republican or the 2nd District goes Democratic by more than the price allows. These are the signals, all of them dated and all of them public.
• Election night, November 3: polls close at 8:00 p.m. and the county boards publish their first periodic reports that night; the 7th District count decides whether ten is the floor or the ceiling.
• The 2nd District's election-day vote: a Republican election-day margin in Ocean and Cape May counties large enough to erase the advance-ballot gap is the result the 11 or more bracket is priced against.
• Late mail ballots: ballots postmarked by 8:00 p.m. on November 3 count if the county boards receive them by November 9, so a close district can stay open for a week.
• Cures and canvass: cure forms are due by November 14, the county boards of canvassers meet on November 18, and recount applications are due by November 21.
• Certification: the Board of State Canvassers must certify the results by December 3, 2026.
When the New Jersey House seats market resolves
The market resolves on the number of New Jersey House seats Democrats win in the November 3, 2026 general election, using official information from the state's election authorities and the United States Congress and a consensus of credible reporting. Polymarket lists the event's end for 11:59 p.m. Eastern on November 3, 2026. Seats are attributed to the party under which each member is elected, a later party switch or vacancy does not change the count, and an independent winner counts for a party only by joining or announcing for its caucus before election day; if an independent's caucus is unknown, the market can stay open until January 4, 2027.
Related New Jersey House seats markets
Every seat in the count has its own page: the 2nd District and the 7th District carry the two races that decide the bracket, and the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 10th and 11th carry the holds. The statewide race on the same ballot is the New Jersey Senate market, and the size of the electorate that decides all of them is the New Jersey Senate turnout market. The newest reporting on the Shore race is the Van Drew and Mullock debate story, and every New Jersey ballot contract is on the elections desk.
