‘That’s a good thing for democracy’: Is gambling making politics fun?

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “I think if more people put their money where their mouths were when it comes to politics, we’d probably be living in a more realistic and less partisan world,” she said via email, adding, “I feel like people could use some grounding.” Another online better, a Bulgarian political analyst based in Germany, told The Independent he only got into the action a few weeks ago, putting 150 euro on Harris, as Trump has “too much of an extreme game” to win over enough voters. Musk tweeted earlier this month that Polymarket’s preference for Trump — currently around 62-38 for Trump — is more reliable than the traditional election research showing him behind Harris, since “actual money is on the line.” On the other side of the spectrum are prediction markets like PredictIt, run out of New Zealand’s Victoria University, and the University of Iowa’s Iowa Electronic Markets, both of which avoid legal scrutiny by being run as academic projects rather than commercial ones. But this didn’t start with Trump — big money election betting has a long, semi-illicit, semi-legitimate history in the US, dating back to the days of Washington, sometimes eclipsing volume on financial markets themselves. “In presidential races such as 1896, 1900, 1904, 1916, and 1924, the New York Times, Sun, and World provided nearly daily quotes from early October until Election Day.” Despite their unique structure and engaged fanbase, political betting markets have plenty of caveats and detractors beyond just the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.