A market research report from Kalshi shows that there’s strong Republican momentum going into the last weeks of the campaign.
Meanwhile many are suspicious of the motivation of one of the largest holders of the pro-Trump side on Polymarket’s election contract.
Republican candidate Donald Trump commands a significant lead against his Democratic rival Kamala Harris on Kalshi and other prediction markets. While this has led to accusations that dark money is manipulating markets, a new research report from Kalshi outlines the case for broad support for Trump and suggests that it might not be a close race.
Trump is currently leading against Harris 56-44 on Kalshi, with a surge occurring in early October – a few days after Trump’s surge on Polymarket.
The rise in Trump’s odds on Kalshi isn’t an entirely unexpected event, Jack Such, a market research analyst at Kalshi, wrote in a note Wednesday.
“Harris is falling in key demographics and has lost ground in every “Blue Wall” state over the past three weeks,” Such wrote, pointing to Harris’ significant underperformance with black men, who traditionally are stalwart democrat supporters, compared to Obama.
With Trump’s odds of winning the popular vote rising, Such observes that there’s not a misprice as the odds of winning the popular vote are in line with his chances in the main election contract.
“Relative to the changes in the main presidential market’s odds, Trump’s chance to win the electoral college and popular vote came exclusively at the expense of his odds to win the electoral college and lose the popular vote,” Such wrote. “[This tells] us that the hypothesis on Kalshi behind a Trump victory is rooted in a belief in his widespread support rather than a belief that he’ll scrape by in a key swing state or two.”
Trump’s projected popular vote surge is largely fueled by North Carolina, where his landslide win odds jumped from 3.5% to 19%, alongside gains in Pennsylvania (+4%) and a slight lead in Michigan, reflecting a weakening Blue Wall for Harris.
Trump’s surge isn’t isolated to one prediction market, as his momentum is observed on Polymarket as well as the U.K’s gambling platform Betfair.
But massive pro-Trump bets on Polymarket – which does not have a know-your-customer (KYC) mechanism – by one account, which appears to have a collection of affiliated accounts, has many within the political forecasting community wondering if dark money is trying to manipulate the markets.
A mysterious high-stakes bettor, identified as “Fredi9999,” has spent $25 million solely betting on Trump across prediction markets, according to research done by Polymarket whale ‘Domer’.
Fredi, according to on-chain detective work done by Domer, appears to operate under multiple accounts, Fredi9999, PrincessCaro, Michie, and Theo, funded through sizeable Kraken deposits (in precise amounts like $500,000 or $1 million).
Each account follows a similar betting pattern, concentrating exclusively on Trump, likely to disguise the trades as individual actions rather than one coordinated investment.
Domer briefly chatted with Fredi on Discord, and crowd-sourced linguistic analysis of their conversation points to someone who has French as a mother tongue.
But what’s missing is an explanation of why Fredi is doing this. Is this an operative trying to pour in dark money to influence an election? Or, is it just a wealthy French trader with a strong pro-Trump conviction?
On Twitter, many have pointed to a hole in the theory that this is dark money at play: Trump’s surge is reflected across multiple markets, and, as Kalshi’s analyst Such argued, in the polls as well.
