Billions were bet on election odds using online markets
The outcome of the presidential election was the most popular wager, but betting on the results in swing states also brought in hundreds of millions of dollars.
Election betting platforms brought in billions of dollars as users around the world wagered on who would win Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, according to an NBC News analysis of betting platforms.
Polymarket, an online betting platform that is not supposed to allow U.S. users, brought in over $3.6 billion in bets on the presidential election, with $1.5 billion wagered on Donald Trump and $1 billion on Vice President Kamala Harris.
Although bets on presidential candidates remained the most popular, bets on the outcomes in specific states racked up a total trading volume of over $270 million on Polymarket and over $120 million on Kalshi, a legal betting platform that serves U.S. users.
On both of the sites, Pennsylvania was the state with the highest betting volume, with over $33 million in wagers on Polymarket and more than $14 million on Kalshi. Michigan and Georgia followed close behind, and the rest of the swing states were all in the top 15 states with the highest trading volume. On both Polymarket and Kalshi, bets on swing states alone made up around half of the total trading volume on state outcomes.
Eric Zitzewitz, an economics professor at Dartmouth University, said that this emphasis on swing states is to be expected, as they’re usually the states people see as the most crucial in the election.
“There’s not that much interest in ‘Will the Republicans win Alabama?’ or ‘Will the Democrats win California?’ People are kind of interested in the states that are going to decide the election,” Zitzewitz said.
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