It’s election day and while both candidates might be neck and neck in the polls, betting sites are showing clear preference toward a Republican victory.
Polymarket, a blockchain-based betting platform, has granted Donald Trump a massive 38 point lead against Kamala Harris as of 8.30 am Eastern Time, according to a round-up published by Forbes.
Other sites like Kalshi, Predict It, Robinhood and Interactive Brokers also favor a Trump win, by percentages of 59, 51, 58 and 60 respectively.
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Overall, these figures have given the Republicans 58.5% odds of winning against the Democratic Party at today’s polls, according to aggregate counting tool Election Betting Odds.
Prediction markets, as sites facilitating bets on the outcomes of various real-world events are otherwise known, have become something of a controversial topic in recent weeks.
Some experts have expressed concern over the potential for odds pushed by these platforms to muddy electoral waters with forecasts based on perceived investment opportunities rather than a wider view of political developments. The flow of money, particularly from foreign entities, can skew the results.
Polymarket, itself the world’s largest prediction market, has come under particular scrutiny, after it was revealed a single French national had bet more than $45 million on a Trump victory, pushing the Republican candidate’s odds as high as 66%.
The site has nevertheless received a ringing endorsement from Trump’s most vocal and arguably most controversial backer, Elon Musk, who has praised prediction markets for being “more accurate than [traditional] polls, as actual money is on the line.”
Billionaire investor and long-time Trump critic Mark Cuban, by contrast, has taken aim at the site, pointing out that American citizens are technically prohibited from trading on the platform, and that “foreign money” is an unreliable predictor of the course of political events in the US.
Rajiv Sethi, an economist at Columbia University’s Barnard College, also warned in an interview with Bloomberg that deep-pocketed gamblers from foreign locales could be throwing down cash in Trump’s favor.
“There’s no reason why somehow the price that emerges from their activity with each other is going to generate an accurate forecast,” Sethi said.
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