Republican Donald Trump extended his lead over Democrat Kamala Harris to seven percentage points on Thursday on the decentralized predictions platform Polymarket — the largest since briefly hitting the same level on Aug. 22.
Trump’s chances of winning the U.S. presidential election in November are now at 53% compared to Harris’ 46%, according to the platform. That's up from a three percentage point margin on Monday, having reversed the lead Harris enjoyed in August after taking over the Democratic candidacy from President Joe Biden.
Among critical swing states, Trump currently outpaces Harris in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania on Polymarket, while Harris leads in Michigan and Wisconsin.
The U.S. election results remain the biggest prediction market on the platform, with a trading volume now totaling more than $800 million. Polymarket’s election odds were also integrated into Bloomberg Terminal earlier this week in a sign of increasing mainstream adoption.
However, Polymarket’s odds contrast sharply with recent national polling averaging 47% to 44% in Harris’ favor, according to analysts at research and brokerage firm Bernstein.
Presidential election national polls average. Image: Bernstein.
Highlighting blockchain’s democratization of markets and its role in helping to pursue the truth in a note to clients earlier this week, Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani, Mahika Sapra and Sanskar Chindalia said if users believe traditional election polls are biased, they can follow the Polymarket odds instead for any divergence with the polls.
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The candidates’ crypto stance
During the Bitcoin 2024 conference in July, the increasingly pro-crypto Trump promised to fire hostile Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler if elected in November. He also said he’d stop the U.S. from selling its bitcoin holdings and create a “strategic bitcoin reserve.”
Last week, Trump launched his fourth NFT trading card series, "Series 4: The America First Collection," which has logged sales of over $2 million.
The former President has also teased World Liberty Financial, a crypto project created by two of his sons that will reportedly be built on the Ethereum blockchain, working with DeFi protocol Aave to facilitate a credit account system for decentralized borrowing and lending.
Meanwhile, Harris has yet to address crypto directly, though her campaign adviser previously said she plans to support measures to help the digital asset industry grow.
The liberal-leaning political action committee Future Forward has also onboarded with Coinbase Commerce to indirectly accept crypto donations on her behalf, The Block confirmed yesterday.
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