Gamblers have spent more than $3.3bn on the betting site Polymarket guessing the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with nearly two-thirds of them banking on a Trump win.
The money spent on Polymarket election bets now even eclipses the combined fundraising hauls of both presidential campaigns, who together have garnered over $2.5bn in donations.
As The Independent has reported, interest in election betting has surged this cycle, thanks to the rise of cryptocurrencies and a recent court ruling clearing the way for another betting market, Kalshi, to operate election contracts inside the U.S. for the time being, over the arguments of federal commodities regulators.
However, despite the momentum for such sites, they’ve faced complications as they’ve become one of America’s new favorite hobbies.
Polymarket, which is ostensibly only open to betters operating outside of the U.S., is under scrutiny for reaching out to U.S.-based social media influencers to promote the site.
“We’ve reached out to influencers on both sides of the aisle to promote our data and drive traffic and eyeballs to polymarket.com, where 99% of visitors consume news and never place a trade,” a Polymarket spokesperson told Bloomberg News, which reported on the outreach efforts.
The platform also probed four accounts that together bet more than $50m on Trump, concluding that the accounts, which were all linked to a single French national, didn’t show signs of deliberately trying to boost Trump’s odds.
While more than 61 percent favor Trump on Polymarket, our poll tracker shows a considerably different picture of the race, with Harris maintaining a 0.9 percent lead over her Republican rival.
Proponents of election betting say that the markets both react faster than traditional polls to public sentiment and keep people more engaged.
“That’s a good thing for democracy,” John Phillips, co-founder and CEO of the exchange PredictIt recently told The Independent. “People who might be disengaged become engaged.”
Outside of the betting markets, the 2024 campaign has been awash in money, with around 18 percent of campaign donations coming from billionaires, who gave nearly $700m in 2024, according to one estimate.
Individual billionaires have also made their mark.
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and owner of X, has spent over $132m backing Trump and other conservative causes this election and has become one of the Trump campaign’s most visible surrogates online and around the country.
