Experts are questioning whether the former president’s significant leads on betting sites accurately reflect the closeness of the race, or if a few multimillion-dollar wagers are influencing the odds. According to FiveThirtyEight’s October 22 aggregate of opinion polls, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are in a tight race for the presidency. Harris had consistently held slight advantages until recently when Trump’s campaign appeared to gain momentum. Predictive markets had already shown a trend favoring Trump before it was reflected in polls, with Trump leading in all seven battleground states on various platforms. However, analysts are unsure of how predictive these markets truly are in forecasting the election outcome. There are concerns that large bets from a few individuals, like the mysterious “Fredi9999,” may be skewing the market and creating biases. With uncertainty surrounding these factors, it remains unclear how accurately these markets reflect the true state of the race leading up to the election on November 5.
Billions of dollars are being spent on predictive markets through a variety of proposition bets, with the majority of the spending taking place overseas.
According to Allen, as of a week ago, approximately $1 billion had been wagered on Polymarket’s U.S. presidential market. By midafternoon on October 22, this figure had increased to over $2.246 billion.
“The predictive markets remained relatively stable from September to October, but in recent weeks, Trump’s popularity in the markets has surged,” Allen noted. “This likely means that around a billion dollars in volume has been generated this week alone.”
The key observation is that there is currently more money being placed on Trump compared to Harris.
