Someone, somewhere there a small group of high-stakes bettors have pushed all their chips to the middle of the table, wagering millions of dollars that Donald Trump will be the next president.
“The blockchain-based election betting site Polymarket priced in a 60% chance of a Trump victory, breaking the 60% threshold for the first time since late July, days after President Joe Biden bowed out of the race.
Other prominent sites which allow users to wager money on the outcome of the election have similar shifts toward Trump: Betfair places a roughly 58% chance at a Trump win, Kalshi 57%, PredictIt 54% and Smarkets 58%.
Election Betting Odds, which aggregates implied betting odds across the five major markets, gives Trump a 57% chance at victory, tilting in Trump’s favor by the widest margin since July 29, up from about 48% at the end of September.
Roughly 60% betting odds does not equate to a 60% to 40% lead for Trump in polls, but rather indicates election bettors expect Trump to win about 60 out of 100 election simulations (think how underdog sports teams often win games despite sportsbook lines).” according to reports.
The Daily Caller writes that betting markets have divided the political world in terms of their predictive value.
The users “Fredi9999,” “Theo4,” “PrincessCaro” and “Michie” make up $26 million in bets for Trump on popular betting site Polymarket, The Wall Street Journal first discovered Friday. Currently, Polymarket predicts that Trump has a 60% chance of winning the 2024 election, compared to only a 39.8% chance of Vice President Kamala Harris winning, a massive difference from the comparatively even odds predicted around October.
Some people, such as billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk, see the betting markets as a reflection of the reality of the election more than the polls. Experts are still divided on whether staking real money makes betting markets more accurate than polling, according to Fortune Friday.
“In Polymarket in particular, you don’t have a particularly large or diverse crowd of people,” Creel said. “A large driver of this is that the exchange requires users to bet with cryptocurrency, which the vast majority of the population has little to no familiarity with. Cryptocurrency tends to be something mostly loved by those on the far right, particularly your libertarian types.”
Some experts even think that the sway in odds on the betting platform is part of a broader operation to boost Trump’s favorability.
“I believe there has been a coordinated effort to change the perception of this race,” Tom Bonier, senior adviser at research firm TargetSmart, told Fortune. “A central argument has emerged in the closing weeks of this campaign: strength versus weakness. Donald Trump’s persona, and therefore his support from voters, relies on being seen as strong. But if the public perception is that he will lose, that all falls apart.”
The Wall Street Journal noted that the “betting spree has echoes of the “Romney Whale,” an unknown trader who placed a flurry of bets on a Mitt Romney victory during the closing weeks of the 2012 election, using Intrade, a now-defunct prediction market. The trader lost nearly $7 million, according to a 2015 paper by a pair of economists from Microsoft and Barnard College. The authors concluded that the bets had characteristics of manipulation, potentially aimed at shaping public perceptions.”
Either way, someone will be raking in the cash in a few weeks.
[Read More: North Carolinians Rock The Vote Despite Hurricane]
