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With the presidential election less than three weeks away, polls indicate former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are in a virtual dead heat.
But the election odds look somewhat different in the prediction markets, where people can bet money on the outcome of a race, and the constantly changing odds of a Harris or Trump win on these marketplaces are being closely watched by politicos.
Since the start of October, there's been a notable divergence between the betting markets and the polls. Despite numerous polling averages showing a close race between Harris and Trump, with all major battleground states within the margin of error, the betting markets have moved decisively for Trump.
Rumblings have grown that a single person or a consortium of people could be tipping the scale for Trump on the betting platform Polymarket, with a series of big bets totaling $30 million, in a bid to boost the narrative that he's a shoo-in for president.
Here's what you need to know.
Polymarket is a crypto-based predictions market that has become one of the most popular venues for placing online bets on upcoming elections.
It was founded in 2020 and requires users to place bets via stablecoins. Stablecoins are crypto tokens pegged to a fiat currency like the dollar and rarely deviate from their value.
Polymarket allows investors to bet on yes or no questions. For example: Will Donald Trump win the 2024 US presidential election?
Polymarket also allows its users to "trade" its bets, or sell out early for profits or to cut their losses.
This year, Polymarket has seen $1.75 billion worth of trading volume, according to data from The Block, with betting activity exploding on US election outcomes. In October alone, the betting market has seen $1.24 billion in trading volume.
Before 2024, Polymarket's monthly trading volume rarely topped $10 million.
Polymarket investors include the early Facebook backer Peter Thiel, ethereum's cofounder Vitalik Buterin, and Airbnb's cofounder Joe Gebbia.
The company has raised a total of $74 million, according to data from Crunchbase.
Trump has a massive lead over Harris in the betting markets. As of 11:55 a.m. on Friday, Polymarket odds showed Trump had a 60.1% chance of becoming the 47th president, compared with just 39.8% for Harris.
There's $628.5 million wagered on Trump, compared with $416.6 million wagered on a Harris victory.
Kalshi, another betting market that recently received approval from a US federal appeals court to operate and take election wagers from US-based bettors, is also skewed heavily toward Trump, at 57% versus 43% for Harris.
However, the race is much tighter in the polls. Harris maintains a 2-point lead over Trump, at 48.3% versus 46.3%, according to the latest polling average compiled by 538. Swing-state polls are even tighter, with 538 polling averages showing nearly 50-50 odds for the candidates in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.
Because Polymarket is decentralized and takes bets via crypto, there's a lot of data to parse through on individual bets, like the source of the crypto wallet a particular wager came from.
The Wall Street Journal reported four Polymarket accounts had bet a combined $30 million that Trump would win the election.
An analysis of the four accounts by the blockchain-analysis firm Arkham Intelligence said "there's strong reason to believe they are the same entity."
The four accounts, which go by the names of Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro, and Michie, have exhibited similar behaviors and were all funded by deposits from the crypto exchange Kraken, Arkham said.
Because the betting markets are relatively illiquid, a $30 million bet can have a big influence on moving the odds in favor of Trump.
The accounts have also wagered millions of dollars on Trump winning key swing states, such as Pennsylvania, and winning the popular vote, which is seen as a long shot.
Adam Cochran, a veteran crypto investor, told the Journal that the betting spree on Polymarket appeared to be a campaign to boost the narrative that Trump has a lot of momentum going into election day.
"It is by far the most efficient political advertising one can buy," Cochran to the Journal.
When Trump's odds of winning the election initially soared on Polymarket on October 7, Elon Musk — who has strongly endorsed Trump and contributed tens of millions to a pro-Trump super-PAC — retweeted a screenshot of the election odds and said, "Victory is not enough, it must be absolutely decisive victory."
To be sure, there's no evidence that the apparent "Trump whale" is trying to manipulate the betting markets, and it could just be that the person or persons have an incredibly strong conviction that Trump will win the election next month.
Something similar occurred in the weeks leading up to the 2012 presidential election, when a "Romney whale" placed a flurry of bets totaling almost $7 million that Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee at the time, would win the election, using the betting market InTrade, which is now out of business.
That whale ended up losing it all, as President Barack Obama secured a second term.
Editor's note: The story has been updated to clarify that the data provided by 538 is an average of multiple polls, not a single national poll.
