Rumpus Daily, 25 Oct 2026: Serbia's Student List regains ground on election day but trails Vučić

In this episode: Serbia's Student List regains ground on election day but trails Vučić; Traders trim Republican odds in TX-09 but still favour Mealer. Two stories this morning. In Serbia, polling day has arrived. Polymarket traders give Aleksandar Vučić's United Serbia a seventy-two per cent chance of winning the most seats in parliament, despite a late rally for the student opposition movement.

Transcript

Opening

Sheema: Good morning and welcome to The Rumpus Daily. I'm Sheema Sharti.

Neil: And I'm Neil Matthews. Every weekday we bring you the signals from the world's prediction markets. Today is Sunday, October twenty-fifth.

Sheema: Two stories this morning. In Serbia, polling day has arrived. Polymarket traders give Aleksandar Vučić's United Serbia a seventy-two per cent chance of winning the most seats in parliament, despite a late rally for the student opposition movement. In Texas, Kalshi traders cut the Republican candidate's odds in the ninth congressional district by eight points in a single day, and still give Alex Mealer seventy-six per cent.

Neil: Six and a half points of the students' bounce came on polling day itself. Is that conviction or traders covering their bets?

Sheema: Serbia first.

Serbia's Student List regains ground on election day but trails Vučić

Sheema: Serbia's Student List regains ground on election day but trails Vučić. Polymarket is running a contract on which party list wins the most seats in Serbia's two-hundred-and-fifty-seat National Assembly. Traders had the Student List, the movement that grew from street protests, at thirty-seven per cent on the eighteenth, cut them to eighteen per cent by the twenty-fourth, and the contract has now recovered to twenty-eight, six and a half points of that in the last day alone.

Neil: At least one pollster had the students ahead going into today. Doesn't the disagreement between the polls give that twenty-eight some grounding?

Sheema: The polls disagree, which means they do not together point towards a Student List win. And the contract pays only if the students top the seat count outright, with ties broken on valid votes. Seats do not move in proportion to polls.

Neil: Fair enough on the mechanics. But a bounce of six and a half points in one day is not nothing.

Sheema: A bounce this close to settlement more probably reflects traders who bet against the students buying those bets back. That is a price correction, not new information on the count. Twenty-eight is still well short of the thirty-seven the students held on the eighteenth. United Serbia at seventy-two is our call.

Neil: What breaks it?

Sheema: Early counts putting the Student List ahead on seats, or their contract climbing above seventy-two per cent, which would make the students the favourites.

Traders trim Republican odds in TX-09 but still favour Mealer

Sheema: Traders trim Republican odds in Texas's ninth district but still favour Mealer.

Neil: Kalshi's contract on a Republican winning that seat fell from eighty-five per cent on the eighteenth to seventy-six today, eight points of it in the last day. A fall that fast looks like the market pricing in real doubt.

Sheema: A seat moving from eighty-five to seventy-six has gone from near-safe to probable. Republicans remain favourites by more than three to one. That is the mechanics of it.

Neil: So the speed of the fall matters less than where it lands.

Sheema: Exactly. And our call is that seventy-six is a price the week's selling has pushed too low. The Democrat needs the Republican contract to fall below fifty per cent before the vote, and it sits twenty-six points above that line.

Neil: The case for the Democrat is that eight points in a day can signal further selling ahead. If that continues, the Democratic contract climbs from twenty-four per cent.

Sheema: Mealer remains our call at seventy-six.

Close

Sheema: Neil, thanks very much.

Neil: Thanks, Sheema.

Sheema: That's The Rumpus Daily for Sunday, October twenty-fifth. We'll see you tomorrow.