As the election looms, Polymarket has opened a few new betting pools to service its clientele of degenerate gamblers. In hours, or perhaps days, we’ll know who has won the U.S. presidential election and all those bets on Polymarket will come due. But there’s always something new to gamble on and so Polymarket has opened several new bets that revolve around who will be inaugurated, not who wins the presidency.
One of the major stories of this election cycle has been the advent of gambling markets. There are many such sites and they’ve been around for years but the uncertainty and heightened emotions of the 2024 presidential election have made them more popular than ever. Of all the betting sites it’s Polymarket that’s drawn the most attention.
Billing itself as the future of news, the crypto-based Polymarket takes bets on events with binary outcomes. Will Trump or Harris win the Presidential election? You can buy shares of that for under a dollar. If your pick wins, you collect the difference on every share.
How does Polymarket decide when that particular market is closed? When can the gamblers breathe a sigh of relief and count their earnings or begin to tally the losses? “This Presidential market resolves when the Associated Press, Fox, and NBC all call the election for the same candidate,” Polymarket says on its website. “In the unlikely event that doesn’t happen, the market will remain open until inauguration and resolve to whoever gets inaugurated.”
As first spotted by Fortune, Polymarket gamblers are now betting that whoever wins the election may not be the person who’s inaugurated. There are two new bets available on Polymarket and they both close on January 20, 2025. The first is “US Inauguration on January 20?” According to the site, this market resolves if the person certified to have won the 2024 election is sworn in as president. As of this writing, the bet has only generated about $60,000 in volume.
The more popular market asking the same question is “Who will be inaugurated as President?” There’s more than $4 million in volume on that one and it’s a straight pick between Trump and Harris. Right now Trump is the favorite to be inaugurated, he’s got 61% of the bets against Harris’ 37%.
It’s a silly thing to bet on but it speaks to a real anxiety shared by a lot of Americans. For months many of us have waited for November 5 because, in part, we wanted this election cycle to be over. It’s been a daunting, grueling, and stupid few years. From Trump’s domination of his Party’s primary, again, to the doddering of Joe Biden and the ascendency of Harris, we’ve all grown exhausted.
But it’s likely that this won’t be over today. This election may drag out for days or even months. Ballots will be counted and recounted. Trump, who never admits defeat, has already been laying the groundwork to challenge the election results. This election won’t truly be over until the results are certified and whoever wins takes the oath of office on January 20, 2025.
Polymarket is counting on that and allowing gamblers to place bets on what’s going to happen. Even if you’ve bet on Harris winning the popular vote or sweeping the election, you can still put your money on Trump getting inaugurated. And some people have put a lot of money on Trump already.
Like most polls, Polymarket’s odds on who wins the presidency were largely a toss-up after Harris entered the race. But massive trades hit the site and pushed the odds in Trump’s favor at the beginning of October. The reasons are wash trading and whales. The Wall Street Journal figured out that four big betters had swung Polymarket’s odds in Trump’s favor.
It even tracked down one of the biggest degenerates, a guy in France who claimed to have “absolutely no political agenda. He’s bet more than $30 million on Trump to win the presidency. If he wins, he gets $80 million. If he loses, it’s all gone.
For people watching the election in America, the stakes feel much higher than that.
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