How Well Did Polymarket Do with Election Predictions?
Grabbing the trajectories and final predictions of major races
Given substack has partnered with Polymarket, I decided to grab key betting markets and screenshot a few of them so we can see how the betting went, and so I can do a post-mortem later in the week (or maybe some months down the road, if that’s what it takes).
Presidential Race
Live widgets:
Screenshot as of 9:09am ET:
Oh, no! Say it ain’t Joever!
Swing States
Screenshots:
Remember, these prediction markets aren’t trying to predict the percentage of the vote that will go to each candidate.
They’re trying to predict which candidate will get the electoral votes.
For example, this is the betting for New York, a cinch for the Democrats:
It’s not that she’ll get 98% of the vote. It will be something more like 70% of the vote. But there’s no way Trump is winning New York.
If he did, he’d have no problem winning the race.
Similarly, Utah:
Trump is not going to get 96% of the vote in Utah. He will get a majority of the vote.
If Harris got a majority in Utah, she would probably have no trouble in the swing states.
Senate
Live widget: [alas, I think it defaults to Democrats in control, but doesn’t label it]
House of Representatives
Widget: [again, doesn’t say which party, but it defaults to Democrats]
Screenshot:
This one is interesting. The highest point was in October, at about 63%, but it’s now breakeven. It’s dipped below 50% a few times, but not for long.
My district: NY-17
Here’s one of interest to me.
Widget: [it defaults to Mondaire Jones winning, to give percentage]
Screenshot:
This one is odd. There was a spike in September, probably from one person trading. It went up to 78%. But it had been at about 60% for Mondaire Jones for a long while.
Then it’s been noisy.
The volume on this bet shows only $32,990 outstanding, compared to $8,845,884 just on the NY state presidential outcome. There’s $3.3 billion in the presidential outcome bets.
So, this one may be shaky. Not so many people betting on this situation, which led to the shakiness of results.
Overall
Screenshot:
So, let’s see how all this goes.