The odds that Vice President Kamala Harris will become this year’s Democratic presidential nominee more than quadrupled on Tuesday, according to traders on Polymarket, the crypto-based prediction platform that has seen massive growth in an election year.
“Yes” shares in a contract asking if she gets the nod were trading as high as 31 cents in midday New York time, indicating the market saw a 31% chance it would happen, up from 7% earlier in the day. The shares have eked out some gains and recently traded as high as 23 cents.
Each stock pays out $1 (in USDC, a stablecoin or cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar) if the prediction comes true, and zero if it doesn’t.
Officially, President Joe Biden is still the presumptive Democratic nominee. But many supporters are calling on him to step aside, and some want Harris to step up after her boss’s shaky performance in last week’s debate with former commander in chief and near-certain Republican standard-bearer Donald J. Trump.
“We should do everything we can to support her, whether it’s second or first,” Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said on television Tuesday.
A Newsweek op-ed by former Congressman Tim Ryan, the first presidential candidate to endorse Biden in 2020, was more direct: “Kamala Harris should be the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.” A Wall Street Journal analysis called Harris “Biden’s most likely replacement.”
The trend was similar Tuesday on PredictIt, a more traditional prediction market platform where bets are settled in dollars rather than crypto. “Yes” shares for Harris more than doubled there to 35 cents. PredictIt’s volume on who will win the Democratic nomination totaled $31 million, dwarfed by Polymarket’s $75 million.
Under an agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Polymarket is no longer allowed to do business in the US, while PredictIt is allowed to operate in the country under a statutory exemption.
Tuesday was Polymarket’s fifth-largest volume day in its four-year history, with $5.7 million in trading, according to Dune Analytics data. June was the first month that Polymarket saw more than $100 million in volume.
The biggest contract to date, with $211 million in bets, is on who will win the US presidency in November. Trump remains the favourite, with a 66% chance of victory.
Meanwhile, KAMA, a meme coin named after the vice president, surged on Tuesday, doubling its price in 24 hours to $0.007815.
