On election night, Arlene Battishill, a retired history professor and political analyst known to her social media followers as “Dr. Arlene Unfiltered,” a bottle of champagne, confident in the data from several states showing a potential Kamala Harris win.
But a different story had emerged on Polymarket, a decentralized forecasting platform founded in 2020, built on blockchain technology and banned in the US. It had consistently shown Trump in the lead since his September debate with Harris, and it ultimately proved to be more accurate than conventional polling methods that showed the race in a dead heat.
This is the third consecutive presidential election in which… [Donald] Trump was underestimated by the polls,” said Harry Crane, professor of statistics at Rutgers University. “The betting markets have been spot on in this cycle, despite attacks from the mainstream media and pollsters, both of whom were wrong in their analysis.”
The results, advocates say, strengthen the case for prediction markets as they become more mainstream and seek to expand election betting in the US.
Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, 26, celebrated the election on CNBC’s Squawk Box, calling it a “watershed moment in news and politics.” Polymarket “was a good two or three hours ahead of the media,” Coplan said. “If you just watched TV you would think it was neck and neck.”
But ‘Dr. Arlene’ predicted in a question and answer session with her followers that ‘a a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money” on the platforms.
“People will be slaughtered financially. It is the most irresponsible thing to bet on our democracy,” she said.
Launched in 2020, Polymarket secured a $70 million funding round in May 2024 led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. Major media outlets such as CNBC and The Economist now regularly quote his predictions. Gamblers are betting billions of dollars on the presidential race before Election Day.
Coplan told CNBC that on election night he received calls from Mar-a-Lago, where the Trump campaign was following his win over Polymarket. “It was surreal,” Coplan said.
Days later, the FBI raided Coplan’s New York City home and seized his electronics — part of an investigation into Polymarket allegedly accepting trades from U.S. users, Bloomberg reported. Coplan suggested the raid was politically motivated, posting on
