Online prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket are attracting scrutiny from state lawmakers, who argue the platforms are undermining state gambling regulations. The growing popularity of platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket has brought prediction markets into mainstream political coverage, with their odds increasingly appearing on-screen alongside traditional polling and election forecasts.
Those markets correctly anticipated Democrat Roy Cooper’s victory in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race, but their performance across the country was more mixed. Two North Carolina academics see both potential value and risks in their growing influence, particularly as the platforms become a more prominent part of how Americans follow elections.
Koleman Strumpf, an economics professor at Wake Forest University who studies prediction markets, said one of their biggest advantages is their ability to respond to new information in real time. “The prediction markets are always open,” he said. “They’re always adjusting to information.” Traditional polls offer a snapshot of voter preferences at a particular point in time. Prediction markets fluctuate as traders buy and sell based on what they believe will happen.
A candidate’s odds can change as new polls are released, campaigns make announcements or election results begin coming in. That continuous flow of information can make markets useful for tracking how a race is developing, Strumpf said. But he cautioned against assuming they are consistently more accurate than traditional polling. “Prediction markets and the poll modelers did about the same,” he said. “They each had their strengths and weaknesses.” In North Carolina, prediction markets gave Cooper roughly a 97% chance of defeating Republican Michael Whatley ahead of Election Day. Cooper ultimately won by nearly 20 percentage points, defeating Whatley 58.8% to 39%.
But Strumpf said neither prediction markets nor traditional polling fully captured the extent of Democratic gains across the country. He pointed to several races where Democrats outperformed expectations, including contests in which markets had favored Republican candidates. Still, Strumpf believes prediction markets will remain an important forecasting tool heading into the 2028 elections. Their ability to incorporate new information quickly, he said, gives them a role alongside polling and other election forecasts.
Sean McKeever, a philosophy professor at Davidson College, is more skeptical of claims that prediction markets provide meaningful public benefit. For markets to provide that broader value, they would need to offer better and more reliable information than traditional polls. McKeever said he has not seen convincing evidence that they do. “I could be proven wrong in the future, but at this point I am not aware of any solid evidence that prediction markets perform better than polls,” he said. “The track records for both are mixed.” McKeever said another measure of prediction markets’ value should be how far in advance they can provide useful information. Knowing who is likely to win just before Election Day offers limited benefit to voters, he argued. “It is of little value to learn, say, 24 hours before election day who will win,” he said. “This is true of both polls and betting markets.”
Strumpf argued that concerns about manipulation should not be limited to just prediction markets. He said traditional polling can also be manipulated and influence political decisions. “If we think we need to regulate and put the microscope on prediction markets, maybe we need to do the same thing with polls,” he said. He pointed to a fabricated poll in Michigan’s 2026 Democratic U.S.
