More than two-thirds of the trading volume on Polymarket's 2028 U.S. presidential election market has been placed on candidates with a less than 1% chance of winning, a Barron's analysis of public data shows. This includes over $386 million in bets on long-shots and constitutionally ineligible figures.
"There will be a token, there will be an airdrop," Matthew Modabber, Polymarket’s chief marketing officer, said during a podcast interview in October. While the company declined to comment on the trading patterns, its stated goal is to be a “global truth machine” for events like elections.
Data shows the most popular bets are on extreme underdogs. Basketball star LeBron James leads with $48 million in volume, followed by Kim Kardashian with $34 million. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is ineligible for the presidency as a non-native U.S. citizen, has attracted $23 million in wagers. Combined, the three official front-runners—JD Vance, Gavin Newsom, and Marco Rubio—have seen just $35 million in trades.
The dominant theory among traders is that this behavior is driven by a desire to farm a future Polymarket token. With a token confirmed but its distribution method unknown, users may be placing high numbers of low-cost bets on long-shot outcomes to maximize their total trading volume, a metric they speculate could be a key factor in qualifying for the airdrop.
A Tale of Two Markets
This pattern of activity on Polymarket appears to be an anomaly when compared to rival prediction markets. On Kalshi, a competing platform, trading volume for the same election is concentrated among the favorites. Bets on Marco Rubio account for 10.6% of Kalshi's volume but only 1.7% on Polymarket.
Conversely, candidates like LeBron James, Kim Kardashian, and Michelle Obama, who are volume leaders on Polymarket, do not even appear on Kalshi's market. The stark difference suggests that Polymarket's volume may not reflect genuine prediction efforts but rather a strategic play for platform rewards.
Implications for Prediction Markets
The situation highlights a potential vulnerability in the prediction market model, where external incentives like token airdrops can distort the platform's core function of forecasting real-world events. If trading volume is driven by reward farming rather than sincere belief in an outcome, the market's data loses its value as a predictive tool. This could undermine the credibility of Polymarket and attract regulatory scrutiny, while also influencing how other Web3 projects design future airdrop campaigns to prevent such gaming of their systems.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
