(NewsNation) — Are the multi-billion-dollar international betting markets rigging their action on the U.S. presidential market?
“No, they’re not, and they can’t be,” said Michael Schwimer, founder of the sports betting consultant firm JAMBOS Analytics.
He told NewsNation’s “On Balance” that a flood of international bets for Donald Trump can’t rig the markets any more than a big bet on the World Cup will affect how the game is played.
“If you’re going to bet big on one side of the market, and it was actually rigged … there would be a ton of (Kamala) Harris money coming in on the other side to bring it back,” he said.
Schwimer said that the flood of money is probably coming from people who believe that Trump is being undercounted in most opinion polls, and they’re finding “big advantages in what they believe in the models they’re building, and they’re making bets based on those advantages. It happens every day in the stock market.”
Schwimer’s opinion is backed up by the hard numbers. On Friday, the online betting platform Polymarket gave Trump a 59.7% chance of becoming the 47th president, compared to 40.1% for Harris. In dollars bet so far, Polymarket has taken in $628.5 million for Trump, and $416.6 million in bets on Harris.
Kalshi, another betting market that may now take legal bets from people in the U.S., is also skewed heavily toward Trump, at 57% versus 43% for Harris.
