As the United States of America processes the results of the latest presidential election, one story has not gotten much attention: How Polymarket, the leading prediction market, accurately forecasted the outcome before mainstream media did. By midnight EST, Polymarket had already indicated 97% likelihood of Trump’s victory, way before any major news channel called even a single swing state as reported by Founder of Dragonfly, a cross-border crypto venture fund, Haseeb Qureshi.
What Polymarket got Right that the Experts Got Wrong
As the dust settles on the election, there’s a story that the WSJ and NYT didn’t tell you. While the mainstream news was busy with their TV pageantry and hedging on calling key swing states, Polymarket, the world’s biggest… pic.twitter.com/hI7SZriIT0
— Haseeb ＞|＜ (@hosseeb) November 6, 2024
According to Haseeb, Polymarket’s performance came from two key advantages over traditional media and polling experts.
Accuracy of Polymarket Bets
First, the online betting platform’s pre-election forecasts were on-point. Mainstream poll-based model called the race to be neck-to-neck with 50/50 chances, but the online betting platform consistently showed over 62% chances of Trump winning the elections. The critics argue that the online betting platform’s polling bet had a strong backing from the crypto whales and hence the chances of Trump winning the elections kept soaring high.
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This led to a notion that since the backing is from crypto whales, the results cannot be trusted as it can be skewed. On the contrary, investment firms like JP Morgan and hedge funds rely on online betting platform data, and it was also integrated into Bloomberg Terminal. This indicates the accuracy of the online prediction market. Elon Musk, while campaigning for Trump also had pointed out that these betting platforms are more accurate as money is involved. With such big investment firms and renowned people relying on these polls, accuracy is for sure not the problem.
Real-Time Results
Second, Polymarket called the election results in real-time, way earlier than the media houses. By tracking correlated polling errors, online betting platform traders quickly recognized Trump’s significant overperformance in states like New York and Florida, which pointed to a sweeping trend across swing states. By 11:30 PM, Polymarket had Pennsylvania at a 90% likelihood for Trump, even though a fraction of votes had been counted.
While the news networks tried to drag out the suspense and keep the viewers glued to the screen, online betting platform traders had already made up their minds.
The online betting platform’s performance demonstrates the power of decentralized prediction markets in providing accurate forecasts. As Polymarket’s founder Shane Coplan, noted, even Trump’s campaign team turned to Polymarket for accurate odds.
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Also Read: Bitcoin Price: 3 Key Factors Driving BTC to $80,000 in Nov!
