In a notable development on the political betting landscape, Vice President Kamala Harris has reached parity with former President Donald Trump, each garnering 49% support among participants on the Polymarket cryptocurrency betting platform. The market focused on predicting the next U.S. president has amassed over $541 million in bets, representing the platform’s largest pool of wagers.
This shift in betting odds coincided with Harris’s announcement of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice-presidential choice, an unexpected move that diverged sharply from Polymarket bettors’ expectations, which had largely predicted Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to be her running mate. Both Harris and Walz, alongside Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance of Ohio, are actively campaigning in Michigan, underscoring the state’s strategic electoral importance.
Harris’s position in the betting market has shown a steady uptick since July 21, following President Joe Biden’s exit from the race, an event prefaced by his recovery from COVID-19 and rampant speculation about his political future. At that juncture, Harris was trailing Trump by a significant margin in the betting pools—30% to Trump’s 64%.
Prediction markets like Polymarket, which utilize Polygon, an Ethereum blockchain layer-2 scaling solution, are often heralded for their capability to encapsulate and reflect market sentiment more accurately than traditional public opinion polls. Critics, however, point out that these markets cater predominantly to a self-selecting group of participants, notably those involved in the cryptocurrency space.
Moreover, the rapid response of Polymarket odds to immediate news events, for example, the attempted assassination of Trump, highlights the platform’s sensitivity to real-time developments. Nonetheless, the surprise selection of Walz over Shapiro illustrates the inherent challenges in forecasting political maneuvers exclusively based on market dynamics.
Polymarket’s recent engagement with statistician Nate Silver, known for his work with the polling aggregation site FiveThirtyEight and his own Silver Bulletin analysis, as an advisor has underscored the platform’s growing influence and its role in the intersection of prediction markets and political analysis.
The platform has witnessed a dramatic increase in activity, propelled by the U.S. presidential race and other key political events. In July alone, which saw not only Biden’s withdrawal but also the assassination attempt on Trump, Polymarket experienced a record $387 million in trading volume, a significant leap from the previous month’s figures. With $130 million already traded in the early days of August, the platform’s prominence and relevance continue to ascend amid one of the most tumultuous political seasons in recent memory.