Opinion polls say the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump comes down to a coin flip.
But there’s a presidential prediction tool that’s relatively new to the public at large and which tells a very different story about the 2024 race — odds posted to online wagering markets.
Those give the former Republican president a commanding 66 percent shot at winning on November 5, way ahead of his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, at just 34 percent.
Confused? Don’t be, says Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi, America’s first legal online election prediction wagering platform, which has taken in more than $92 million in bets tied to the 2024 race.
‘We should definitely trust the [wagering] markets,’ Mansour told DailyMail.com this week.
Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi, says election bettors are more accurate than pollsters because they have ‘skin in the game.’
Kalshi’s presidential election market gives Trump a striking 26-point lead over Vice President Harris.
‘Prediction markets are places where people have money on the line, skin in the game. People don’t lie with their money.’
Kalshi, Polymarket and other such platforms have quickly emerged as a way to put money on elections legally and gauge who’s ahead, after cycles in which when pollster forecasts crashed and burned.
The opinion polls, which involve asking people how they plan to vote, said then-candidate Hillary Clinton would easily defeat Trump in 2016.
In the end, it was close and the Democrat lost — the polls could not have been more wrong.
In 2020, they gave President Joe Biden a comfortable lead over Trump; his final margin was much slimmer.
This week, the polling average by Real Clear Politics, showed Trump with 48.5 percent of the popular vote against 48.4 percent for Harris — a dead heat.
Kalshi, however, affords Trump a whopping 26-point lead over Harris. Polymarket, a similar, crypto-based platform, puts his lead at 33 percentage points.
Mansour and other tech bosses say the prediction markets are closer to reality.
Kalshi already outperforms the experts when predicting inflation, Fed interest rate adjustments and even earthquakes, he said.
Elon Musk likewise has said the betting markets are ‘more accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line.’
Betting directly on elections is restricted in the US.
But such platforms as Kalshi, PredictIt and Polymarket, are not strictly gambling sites — they get around the restrictions by serving as venues for trading contracts on future outcomes.
Kalshi became the first legal prediction market in the US thanks to a federal appeals court ruling earlier this month.
Polymarket says it restricts US-based users from taking part, but crafty bettors sometimes get around that by using a tool known as a VPN, which can hide their location.
Tech maven Elon Musk is a big supporter of Trump, and the online predication markets that say he’s a winner.
Kalshi users have already put more than $85 million on the outcome of the presidential election.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .