You Could’ve Made a 100x Prediction Market Bet on Last Night’s Elections

Although the results of last night’s US election proved surprising to many political experts – given the extent and scale of the Democrats’ victories across the country – the forecast markets proclaimed that they had known the result for months.

Indeed, the forecast markets including Polymarket and Kalshi correctly called the New York mayoral race, plus the gubernatorial races in both New Jersey and Virginia, by excessive margins. Moreover, those margins have been set for months in all three races, leaving relatively few opportunities to make a lucrative bet on election night.

But one exception stands out. Yesterday, the morning of the election, Polymarket bettors were convinced that the New Jersey Democrat Mikie Sherrill will defeat his Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, by a relatively small percentage of votes. At $2.7 million market on Sherrill’s predicted margin of victory he had his chance of winning from 12-15% to a minuscule 1.1% chance.

And just hours later, that’s exactly what happened. Sherrill finally beat his opposition by 13.1%, in one of the most impressive performances of the Democrats’ big night.

The bet proved to be one of the most lucrative bets on an election night that users of the prediction market, for the most part, saw coming. A $100 bet on the Sherrill market at the right time yesterday — 9:00 am ET, to be exact — would have yielded nearly $10,000.

Did anyone catch it at the right time? Almost, but not quite. A Polymarket user bought the margin of victory right at 10 cents, but also chose to go all in the bet. His $12,960 position is now ready to pay over $123,000.

Another one userwho discovered $9,891 of the correct position at 11 cents, eventually made more than $86,000.

While prediction markets pride themselves on marketing their platforms as superior to traditional forms of data collection – last night, Polymarket proclaimed “The polls are dead” – bettors might have done well in this case to pay attention to the old-school signals. The final survey in the New Jersey governor’s race, released yesterday morning, had Sherrill up by 12.