Polymarket Traffic Surges as US Election Approaches

Betting market’s September traffic up 16% from August and more than 5,000% from September 2023

The prediction market Polymarket has seen exploding traffic in the last few weeks and months on the strength of bettors taking positions on the outcome of the upcoming US Presidential election.

Many are betting on a victory by former President Donald J. Trump, whether out of sincere belief in his odds of winning or because the cryptocurrency-powered website attracts fans of the most pro-crypto candidate.

The polymarket.com website attracted 16 million visits in September 2024, including 1.2 million on the day after the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, according to Similarweb estimates. About half of the unique visitors in September were new visitors to the site, and about 75% were men.

Predicting a Trump victory

Polymarket’s bettors currently favor a win by Donald Trump, a fact Elon Musk celebrated with a tweet saying the market predictions are “more accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line.”

Update: on the day after Musk’s Oct. 7 post about X, polymarket.com traffic spiked to 1.1 million daily visits, just a little less than its previous 1.2 million visit peak after the US Presidential Debate.

A crypto-powered investment market

Investment analysts are also taking notice, for example with this post by Will Ogden Moore, a research and product leader for the crypto investment fund Grayscale Investments.

The crypto angle is that Polymarket is a distributed platform on which bets are placed using USDC, a cryptocurrency stablecoin pegged to the value of the US dollar.

Should you believe the market?

Prediction markets work more like sports betting platforms than traditional polls as predictors of the outcome of an election (or any other trend), and many statistics enthusiasts consider them worth consulting as an alternative to polls. The theory is that bets from people who spend money to register their opinions may be more reliable than people giving their opinion to a pollster.

Like polls, prediction markets don’t always point in the same direction. Moore notes that Polymarket competitor Kalshi currently shows a lead for Harris, not Trump. PredictIt (predictit.org) also shows a slight lead for Harris as of today.

A Forbes report, Trump’s Election Odds Spike On Polymarket As Musk Touts Betting Site, points out that Polymarket’s ranking could be influenced by a handful of multimillion dollar bets, since Polymarket does not limit bets the way its competitors do.

But Polymarket is the platform  seeing exponential growth.

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Methodology

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