Polymarket in its present state is representative of the United States at large: rooted in populist ideals, but throwing every advantage to the rich by virtue of the so-called “free market.”
By Will Baker
The 2024 U.S. presidential election was one of the most disheartening nights of the last year. It was also the first time I heard about Polymarket.
This was not a coincidence, of course. As a group of friends and I were crammed in a claustrophobic dorm room watching a map of states flipping red or blue, the floor’s resident assistant drifted into the doorway. The night was looking grim for Kamala Harris, so we lamented the impending loss for a bit before the RA mentioned that at least a friend of his stood to gain some money from Donald Trump’s victory. The friend had placed a wager on the election — through Polymarket.
At the time, I was too preoccupied to pay the matter much mind, but as I continued to encounter mentions of the fledgling betting platform, I began to think back on that fateful night. For those unfamiliar with the latest advance in betting technology, Polymarket is a platform that allows users to gamble on anything under the sun, from sports to economics, military conflicts to politics. The latter is the most fascinating part of the site, as Polymarket’s odds are now widely being used to predict electoral results instead of traditional polling. However, with the widespread adoption of accessible betting markets a major concern arises: when you put a price tag on the future, you allow the wealthiest to buy the outcome they desire.
Polymarket has not always had such a large presence. In many ways, the 2024 election, when I first heard about the platform, was its breakthrough. Despite being banned in the United States, Polymarket saw an enormous sum of $3.2 billion wagered on the election’s outcome. At a time when most polling showed that the race was too close to forecast, the majority of these wagers predicted that Trump would be triumphant. The prediction was obviously correct, which has since lent the site serious credibility. In fact, on election night, it was allegedly through Polymarket that the Trump campaign learned they had won the race.
As a result of this early showing for Trump, Polymarket became somewhat entangled with his victory. Only eight days after the election, the FBI raided the New York City home of Polymarket’s CEO, Shayne Coplan, and seized several electronic devices. Polymarket decried the raid as “obvious political retribution,” while Coplan asserted that Polymarket was “committed to being nonpartisan.” Coplan’s actions do not exactly bear this out. He was enthusiastic about Trump’s win, declaring that “the future of America…has never been brighter,” and that Trump’s administration was “revitalizing the American dream.”
Additionally, Trump’s Department of Justice closed the Biden administration’s investigation into Polymarket in July, and the betting platform itself currently forecasts over a 95 percent chance of resuming operation in the United States during 2025. It is safe to say that Polymarket has gained enormously by Trump’s success.
The ties between Trump and Polymarket go far beyond the usual “Trump-technology” relationship. The worldviews of both parties overlap in a way that is unique among the world of technology-administrative partnerships and may be just the reason for their tandem successes. Both Trump and Polymarket paint themselves as populist outsiders seeking to unseat an entrenched class of experts — Trump with his rhetoric about “draining the swamp” and Polymarket with its opposition to the traditional system of polling.
In the year since the election, Polymarket odds have become increasingly common as a metric for electoral outcomes. During the recent New York City mayoral race, news outlets reported Polymarket odds for the candidates with the same gravitas once reserved for more traditional polling. In conjunction with the failure of big-name pollsters such as Anne Seltzer and Allan Lichtman in 2024, one has to think that Polymarket’s assertion about being “better than legacy polling” might be correct. Polymarket argues that a rapidly-updated general consensus, formed by the average of the wagers made through their service, provides a more accurate report than often-outdated polls performed by a single person or group. But Polymarket’s boom in popularity is about more than just accuracy; it is an expression of the populist sentiment surging across the United States.
Traditional polling comes from a single voice, often an expert or group of experts, analyzing a field of data. In the modern day, these sorts of polls are becoming ever more unreliable thanks to falling response rates, faulty assumptions, and closer elections than ever before. Even more problematic, these polls are handicapped by the fact that they are, ultimately, framed by the outlook of whichever single individual or organization is compiling them. Polymarket, on the other hand, is a place for one and all to share their opinions. It is a veritable vox populi of polling. Moreover, unlike traditional polling, Polymarket’s predictions are backed up by money. This leads people to be more likely to wager on what they truly think will happen, rather than what they want to happen. It is this, combined with its populist elements, that gives Polymarket both its popularity and its accuracy. One could even argue that the platform is a more democratic means of prediction than previous polling methods.
Polymarket shares another similarity with our president, in that both are incredibly insincere. While their populist rhetoric has led to their popularity, said rhetoric is nothing more than a veneer for their real motivation: money. In the Trump administration, the worship of populism and the “common man” is betrayed by the fact that it is the wealthy elite who hold the most power and have the most to gain. Trump has already facilitated the largest upward transfer of wealth in recent history, and it is clear that technology CEOs can easily bend his ear.
Within the world of Polymarket, the same principles apply. The ultra-wealthy can make huge bets on their preferred outcome, thereby shifting the market’s prediction and creating the possibility of a huge payout. An anonymous buyer did just this in 2024, waking up on Nov. 6 with $85 million in winnings. It is true we do not yet fully understand how a shift in predictions could change the outcome of a race, but it certainly seems possible that if Polymarket odds shift in support of one candidate, a feedback loop could be created where more people vote for that candidate than previously would have. In such a scenario, Polymarket would serve as both a method to forecast elections and a method to influence them, the latter for the rich and the rich alone.
But that does not mean Polymarket is without its merits. The new technology has truly served as an effective gauge of public opinion regarding political races, and its ability to update in real time is undeniably invaluable. If Polymarket were to be placed under certain regulatory measures, it could very well live up to its populist roots and become a kind of “people’s poll.”
The first step in achieving such a vision would be a limit placed on how much any one person could bet on a specific prediction market and more stringent security measures to prevent one person from controlling multiple accounts at once. Such measures would run counter to the present ideal of the “free market” that Polymarket embraces (and, as such, would be highly unlikely in the current political climate). It would rely on the quantity of bets, rather than amounts of money, to determine outcomes. But these regulations would certainly be beneficial. By limiting individual spending, they would equalize the playing field.
One could take these regulations a step further. In some states, such as Delaware, the sports betting market operates as “a de facto monopoly under the state lottery.” Such a system, functioning at the national level with Polymarket, could very well allow the U.S. government to better oversee the fairness of prediction markets while providing a national means for political forecasting. Nationalization would be the ultimate and best form of government oversight in this model. Of course, such an arrangement would need to be carefully constructed so as to remain nonpartisan no matter which party took power.
That may sound difficult, but nonpartisanship has been achieved before: at the state level with the redistricting process. I know that sounds crazy in light of the current national climate regarding redistricting, but bear with me. Some states use an independent commission to redraw district lines, and in the case of states such as New York, these commissions have been rated as unbiased. These independent commissions offer a model for a potential national oversight board for Polymarket that could remain unbiased if implemented correctly.
This is not to say that the entire redistricting process should be our model for nonpartisanship — far from it. But there are elements, such as stipulations that committees be composed of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans with a set number of independents, that would absolutely help to ensure equitability in government oversight over Polymarket. These measures would have to be airtight (as the present push towards gerrymandering has shown us, previously neutral processes can be co-opted for partisan means), but that does not mean their implementation is impossible. Simply put: it can be done. And to ensure that Polymarket becomes a truly democratic platform, it should be done.
Polymarket in its present state is representative of the United States at large: rooted in populist ideals, but throwing every advantage to the rich by virtue of the so-called “free market.” While these populist sentiments are propping up a system designed to benefit the elite, hope for a truly democratic future is hidden within.
It may take years to get there, but Polymarket has already proven that it is here to stay. The world of polling has been forever changed. The question is whether it will be for the people or for the powerful.
Originally published by Berkeley Political Review, 12.06.2025, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
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