President Trump Hits New Record In Betting Markets, Now All Six Swing States Too!

I have a fantastic news to share with you all…

While the betting markets do not guarantee the results of the election, as the saying goes “the house never loses” and “Vegas is rarely wrong”.

So I do like to follow them, and the best place I like to watch is Polymarket.

First up, we start with the big one, the betting odds for the Presidential Election, which now have President Trump in a commanding 65% to %35 lead:

But that’s not all….

The last time I checked, President Trump was trailing in two battleground states, Nevada and Michigan, but now he’s leading in all six swing states — many by extremely large margins — look at Georgia:

The only metric where he’s not leading is in the expected Popular Vote Winner, but (1) that is irrelevant because only the Electoral College matters, and (2) I suspect when all the dust settles after the election, President Trump may just win this one too!

But that’s still not all….

Perhaps the best news of all is in the Balance of Power estimates.

This is where we see if President Trump and the Republicans will face a divided Congress or whether we could have a clear mandate across the Presidency and both the Senate and House.

And while the House is very thin margin right now, all three are currently tilting RED:

Now let’s go a little deeper into the story, because there is more at play here than just the stats.

It appears a “whale” has been making very large bets recently for President Trump.

In fact, CNBC reports a French trader has recently placed over $28 million worth of bets this week for President Trump:

A stark shift toward former President Donald Trump on the political gambling platform Polymarket this month stoked scrutiny about four accounts that have collectively spent over $28 million betting on the Republican nominee to win the 2024 presidential election.

Polymarket on Thursday confirmed what a number of experts have suspected: All four accounts are controlled by a single trader.

A company spokesperson in a statement to CNBC described the whale as a French national with “extensive trading experience and a financial services background.”

The statement said the trader’s accounts were funded from a “well-known centralized crypto exchange,” which other outlets have identified as the U.S.-based exchange Kraken.

The company insisted that it has found no evidence that the trader is trying to juice Trump’s odds on the political betting market.

An investigation involving third-party experts “to date has not identified any information to suggest that this user manipulated, or attempted to manipulate, the market,” Polymarket said.

The New York Times, which reported Polymarket’s statement earlier Thursday morning, said the company worked with the investigations firm Nardello & Company.

The scrutiny on the Polymarket trades comes as political betting markets have taken on a much more prominent role in the 2024 election cycle.

Trump’s supporters have touted Polymarket’s widening odds gap with Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris as evidence that Trump’s support is growing — even though the shift diverges from most national polls, which show a neck-and-neck race, well within the margin of error.

Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and one of the biggest financial backers of Trump’s White House bid, asserted on X, the social media platform he owns, that the betting markets are “more accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line.”

Polymarket in Thursday’s statement emphasized that “prediction markets are not opinion polls—they measure the likelihood of an event occurring rather than the percentage of people who intend to take an action such as, in this case, voting on Election Day.”

“Unfortunately, this fundamental misunderstanding is responsible for much of the misinformation about Polymarket and other prediction market platforms,” the company said.

As of Thursday morning, the accounts’ total position on the presidential election bet was valued at about $28.6 million, according to Polymarket data.

The four accounts — Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro and Michie — are among the top five holders on the pro-Trump side of Polymarket’s bet on who will win the race for the White House.

The trader’s accounts have also bet over $7 million that Trump will win the popular vote over Harris.

This brings up all sorts of questions….

Do these big bets mean the data is skewed unnaturally to President Trump?  Should the numbers not be trusted?

Or perhaps if someone has $28 million to bet on something so speculative, should we assume this is a very smart person who has accumulated all this wealth and they’re probably not frivolous enough to risk parting with that money unless they have an extremely high degree of confidence?

Which do you think is more likely?

And who is this French whale anyway?

Forbes has some more information:

The growing election betting platform Polymarket confirmed to several news outlets one person based in France is behind many of the recent wagers placed on former President Donald Trump returning to the oval office, putting to rest speculation about whether the “whale” placing multimillion-dollar bets on the election was illegally doing so stateside.

A French national is behind four of the five biggest Polymarket bettors on a Trump victory next month, a company spokesperson told several outlets Thursday.
Those four accounts – Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro and Michie – have a combined $28.6 million on Trump election bets, according to CNBC, making up four of the five largest holders of Trump victory shares.

That makes up more than 1% of the $2.4 billion wagered on Polymarket’s $2.4 billion presidential election winner market.

The big Trump backer is someone with “extensive trading experience and a financial services background,” a Polymarket spokesperson told Bloomberg, adding the trader “is taking a directional position based on personal views of the election.”

The blockchain-based platform “has not identified any information to suggest that this user manipulated, or attempted to manipulate, the market,” the spokesperson added.

Assisting Polymarket in the probe was corporate investigations firm Nardello & Company, according to the New York Times, which first reported the identity of the Trump whale.