According to The Wall Street Journal, the polls for the two US presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, are neck and neck. However, the odds in decentralized prediction markets heavily favor Trump, raising concerns of manipulation. Tarek Mansour, the founder of prediction market Kalshi, countered these claims by citing data from his own platform.
According to the national average of Real Clear Politics, Harris leads Trump by about 1.2 percentage points. However, on the blockchain-based prediction market Polymarket, users believe that Trump’s chances of winning have risen to 60% in the past two weeks, while Harris stands at 40%. In early October, the difference between the two was only a few percentage points. The Wall Street Journal reported that four Polymarket accounts have systematically and frequently placed bets on Trump winning the election.
Tarek Mansour of Kalshi first refuted claims that a few major bettors manipulated the bets to benefit Trump. He cited data from Kalshi, stating that the median bet amount for Harris ($85) is higher than that of Trump ($58), and also mentioned that there are more people betting on Trump on the Kalshi platform. These findings align roughly with the 20-percentage-point difference reflected on Polymarket.
Mansour further emphasized that Kalshi is a prediction market exclusively for US users, unlike Polymarket, in order to counter rumors that foreign manipulation influenced the prediction market odds. He concluded by asserting, “Prediction markets are unbiased sources of new truth.”
The value of prediction markets and their utility compared to traditional polls is still subject to debate. For example, Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes that prediction markets are more accurate than polls due to the involvement of real money. However, critics point out that the fact that US users cannot use Polymarket does raise some concerns about the validity of the platform’s results.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
