Election betting sites are pouring money into social media advertising ahead

While the latest polls suggest the presidential election could be a close one, some ads on social media paint a very different picture.

In some ads for online betting platform Polymarket, charts depict former President Donald Trump’s lead as “up to 32 percent likely” over Vice President Kamala Harris, claiming the service is “the most accurate way to track the election.”

However, what Polymarket doesn’t always disclose with its ads is that the percentages displayed are actually tabulated odds based on bets placed with its service, not projections based on representative polls of voters. More than half of the ads fail to mention that the numbers are rooted in prediction markets.

“The idea is that if people don’t agree with the market price, they have the opportunity to capitalize by buying the part they think is underpriced,” Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan explained in a social media post mediate.

“Don’t trust the polls – trust the markets,” some advertisements for the platform state.

Social media ads flooded platforms like Facebook, Instagram and X. On Meta alone, Polymarket poured at least $50,000 into a campaign that included 45 ads promoting the odds, according to data available in Facebook’s ad library .

One ad — viewed more than 900,000 times on Facebook and Instagram since Oct. 28 — features Trump beating the odds at Polymarket, according to Meta Ad Library. Among the viewers, 20% are men between the ages of 45 and 54 and 12% are women in the same age group. The ad was seen the most in California, New York and Texas, with 16%, 11% and 10% of viewers in these regions, respectively.

A few others include questions like “Did Serving French Fries Help Trump’s Chances?” or “Trump has all the aura?” Of the 45 Meta ads, many include solo images of Trump, some include side-by-side images of both candidates, and none include solo images of Harris.

A separate campaign sponsored by right-wing personality Shaneyy Richh included nine ads promoting Polymarket’s forecasts.

“Full list of real conservatives being polled by political pollsters,” read one ad, which showed a man squinting at a small piece of paper. “Tired of biased polls? Find out what’s really happening in the 2024 race,” the caption read.

On X – a platform owned by one of Trump’s biggest supporters, Elon Musk — ads also promoted predictions on the site’s search page.

Polymarket, which offers betting on sports, business, science, politics and more, rEPORTS that users spent more than $2.7 billion betting on the next president. According to one X postone user bet $2.2 million on a Harris win.

Based on user bets, Polymarket says Trump’s odds of winning are around 65.5% and Harris’s odds of winning are 34.5% as of October 31.

“Polymarket quotes are derived from the market price of a contract that pays $1 if an event occurs and expires worthless if it doesn’t,” a Polymarket blog post read. “For example, someone paying 60 cents for a ‘yes’ Trump contract implies a 60 percent chance of winning.”

Not everyone is quick to place bets or even trust the Polymarket system.

“Trump and right-wing influencers are backing these polymarket odds as a poll,” said Claudio Vallejo, an online creator, via a TikTok video. “They’re using these odds as evidence or proof that Trump is peaking at the right time and is so popular that there’s no way he’s going to lose in November. … They’re setting the stage for ‘too big to handle.’

A company spokesman referred to a “misunderstanding” by the company, explaining that the statistics were not opinion polls, but quotas calculated from shares traded on Polymarket. The odds are not intended to reflect public opinion, but to reflect the level of confidence bettors have in either a Trump or Harris victory.

“A big point of confusion is that both vote share and share are expressed as a percentage, but they don’t mean the same thing,” Polymarket he wrote on his Substiva page.

Coplan recently called on X to defend the platform as “nonpartisan,” calling it a “reality check” designed to “harness the power of free markets to demystify the real-world events that matter most to you.”

“Polymarket is not about politics,” he wrote in one statement posted on X on October 25. “This US election cycle, we’ve been thrust into the spotlight because people are tired of having to understand ‘For You’ feeds, pundits and incongruous polls – we take that responsibility seriously… Let’s hope that politics it is the first step for the masses to realize the value of market-based forecasting.”

Although the ads are trending in the United States, it is prohibited for “US persons,” any citizen or even temporary resident, to participate in betting, according to Polymarket’s terms.

Currently, Polymarket requires punters to agree to terms and conditions confirming that they are “not a resident, national, or agent of the United States of America” ​​or other nations where the platform is regulated.

In 2022, Polymarket was fined $1.4 million by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which said it was illegally betting on events in the US

A federal appeals court recently overturned the CFTC’s decision to bar the election betting company Kalshi from restricting “US persons” from placing bets on their markets – but Polymarket was not part of that suit and the law banning bets on Polymarket is still in place force. Kalshi’s stats show a 59% and 41% split between Trump and Harris, respectively. The company also used social media to promote election betting, spending more than $140,000 on Meta ads, according to the company’s ad library.

While people in the US shouldn’t place their own bets, a Polymarket spokesperson explained why they think their platform could be useful for Americans, saying the company acts as a source of live information similar to the market of values.

The social media ads do not explicitly encourage people in the US to bet, but do not include a regulatory disclaimer.

However, the site is attracting the attention of many right-wing officials and celebrities, including Trump himself.

“We are up in the polls quite substantially. They have a new phenomenon and that is a gambling survey. They call it the poly poll or something I’ve never heard of,” Trump said at an Oct. 18 rally in Michigan, with a crowd member shouting “Polymarket” to correct him.

“Polymarket, and I think it’s 64 to 38, 36, something like that. So it’s not bad. I don’t know what the hell it means, but it means we’re doing pretty well,” he added.

Although Polymarket called Trump’s reference to the company a “common mistake” of “mistaking Polymarket odds for polls,” a paid ad shared the rally clip with the caption: “they call it pollypoll or something.”

The Instagram feed does not contain any clarification similar to the one on the blog post.

Musk also went to X at share the predictions — then 67 percent and 33.1 percent for Trump and Harris, respectively. In another post, Musk said the Polymarket shares were “more accurate than polls.”

The 3rd of November NBC News poll found that Harris and Trump were tied among respondents, each with 49 percent support among registered voters. Every major poll from last week shows a split between the two candidates ranging from 0 to 3 percentage points, with most differences within the margin of error.

Some experts caution caution when analyzing both surveys and markets.

“When people look at polls, they just expect real accuracy at a certain point,” John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which focuses on topics such as electoral demographics and voting, told NBC News this week past. “It’s not that we can’t get good information … but if you really expect the polls to tell you … what’s going to happen next Tuesday, obviously, that’s just a built-in margin of error.”

While Fortier notes that the financial risk associated with markets can be seen as a “more serious” gesture than a survey response, he stresses “real doubts” and warns that “the details matter.”

“I just see the possibilities for more market distortion,” he said. “I’m generally skeptical, and then I’m even more skeptical of a narrower market that also excludes US citizens.”