The day before the election, Arlene Battishil, a retired history professor and political analyst known as “Dr. Arlene Unfiltered” to her social media followers, picked up a bottle of champagne, confident in the data from different States showing a potential Kamala Harris victory.

But a different narrative has emerged on Polymarket, a decentralized prediction platform founded in 2020, built on blockchain technology and banned in the United States. It has consistently shown Trump in the lead since his September debate with Harris, and it ultimately proved more accurate than conventional polling methods that showed the race in a deadlock.

“This is the third consecutive presidential election in which (Donald) Trump has been underestimated by the polls,” said Harry Crane, a statistics professor at Rutgers University. “The betting markets have been perfect during this cycle, despite attacks from the mainstream media and pollsters, both of whom got their analysis wrong.”

The results, advocates say, strengthen the case for prediction markets as they become more common and seek to expand election betting in the United States.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, 26, celebrated the election on CNBC’s Squawk Box, calling it “an inflection point in news and politics.” Polymarket “was a good two or three hours ahead of the media,” Coplan said. “If you just watched TV, you’d think it’s neck and neck.”

But “Dr. Arlene,” in a question-and-answer session with her supporters, predicted that “a “A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money” on the platforms.

“People are going to get massacred financially. It’s the most irresponsible thing to bet on our democracy,” she said.

Legal wrangling runs its course

Launched in 2020, Polymarket secured $70 million in funding in May 2024, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. Major media outlets like CNBC and The Economist now regularly cite his predictions. Bettors are betting billions of dollars on the presidential race before Election Day.

Coplan told CNBC he received calls on election night from Mar-a-Lago, where the Trump campaign was following his victory at Polymarket. “It was surreal,” Coplan said.

Days later, the FBI raided Coplan’s New York home and seized his electronic devices — part of an investigation into Polymarket allegedly accepting transactions from U.S.-based users, Bloomberg reported. Coplan suggested the raid was politically motivated, posting on

At competitor Kalshi, Americans legally bet $100 million on the presidential race after the platform successfully challenged the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s ban on election betting in October, reported NPR. The decision by Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, marked a return to a practice that was common in American races until the turn of the 20th century. The CFTC appealed this decision.

Kalshi, who attracted approximately $1 billion in overall election betting, returned to court in November to counter the appeal, arguing that only Congress had the authority to ban election betting.

Critics remain unconvinced. “It’s pure gambling. Election betting can’t predict the future any better than whether or not you’ll roll 21 at blackjack,” said Cantrell Dumas, director of derivatives policy at Better. Markets.

“It’s just absurd to think that players can trigger elections,” Dumas said.

The Future of Election Prediction

The credibility of traditional polling was further undermined in the 2024 presidential race. Ann Selzer called it quits after her Iowa poll predicting a Harris miss by double digits. A Rutgers-Eagleton poll showed a huge lead for Harris, which turned out to be much narrower.

A common argument from proponents of the prediction market is that betting on election results is more “pure” and more in line with market forces than traditional polls, which they say can be politically biased and manipulated.

“Betting markets provide an incentive to be right and a disincentive to be wrong. If you’re right you make money, if you’re wrong you lose money,” said Crane, the Rutgers professor. “The same cannot be said for polls. Pollsters continue to release polls cycle after cycle, even when they are seriously wrong.”

Although no one knows the long-term future of prediction markets in the United States, the Trump administration’s return to power could reshape it for betting enthusiasts, he said.

“If the new administration keeps its promise to promote freedom and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and regulation, then betting markets will thrive for years to come,” Crane said. “I expect election betting markets to continue to grow in popularity and be much larger and more widely accepted next time around.”