the essential
One week before the American presidential elections, which will take place on November 4, 2024, an unsuspected factor could well influence the outcome of the vote: the popularity of the candidates on financial betting sites.
Will the outcome of the American presidential election be indexed to the price of financial bets? Since the start of the campaign, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris' chances of victory have been the subject of massive speculation. In this regard, the leader in cryptocurrency betting, Polymarket, has accumulated 100 billion dollars in bets. A success such that the New York start-up has established itself as a key player in the public debate across the Atlantic, regularly cited by the American media.
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Which raises the question of its influence on public opinion. Especially since, where the polls indicate a reduced gap between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, online betting gives the Republican candidate the winner. On October 14, the Polymarket site indicated that 64% of the sums bet on the presidential election had been bet on the Republican billionaire.
The same day, the latter, maintaining the confusion between opinion surveys and bets, declared on the social network However, if the scales tipped in his favor, it was because a French trader had alone bet more than 30 million dollars on his victory through four different accounts. Some days, this Frenchy's activity even represents more than 20% of bets. In fact, the 64% of bettors cited by Donald Trump as his supporters would therefore be, almost a third, made up of a single man…
Interference attempts
Beyond that, Donald Trump's popularity on Polymarket has raised suspicions about possible attempts at Republican interference. Officially, Polymarket no longer offers its services to customers residing in the United States since 2022, but according to the New York Timesgetting around this limitation is child's play.
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The billionaire and fervent supporter of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, for his part, stepped into the breach by declaring Polymarket “more reliable than the polls, since there is money at stake”. He himself put words into action by offering voters the chance to win a million dollars on the condition of signing a petition advocating Republican values. Approach aimed, under the cover of a lottery game, at rallying them to the cause of the former President, or even at “transforming politics into a game”. In this regard, Polymarket has undoubtedly completed the transformation of one into the other. It remains to be seen the impact of these dangerous connections at the polls.
