When it comes to gauging voters' expectations ahead of the 2024 presidential election, one time-tested method offers a reliable tool: As the old saying goes, follow the money.
According to the online betting platform Polymarket, which bills itself as the "world's largest prediction market," former President Donald Trump had a 56 percent chance of winning the election, compared to only 37 percent for President Joe Biden as of Wednesday.
The current RealClear Polling average of polls shows Trump leading Biden by only 1.1 percent in a head-to-head match-up.
Polymarket has been described as a prediction platform that lets its users place bets on world events. Users buy and sell shares using cryptocurrency to bet on the likelihood of specific events taking place.
For betting purposes, according to Polymarket, only three other individuals had a measurable chance of winning the election: former first lady Michelle Obama (4 percent), Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (2 percent) and Vice President Kamala Harris (1 percent).
From the bookmakers' perspective, of course, the purpose of odds-making is to attract a roughly equal number of bettors on either side. Thus, Trump's status as the odds-on-favorite means that in order to win $1 on his election, bettors must wager 57 cents on the former president. By contrast, to win $1 in the event of Biden's re-election, bettors need only wager 37 cents.
In other words, Polymarket must bribe bettors to wager on Biden by offering better odds. That means that bettors, by a margin of nearly 20 percentage points, expect a Trump victory.
Curiously, as of Wednesday, Polymarket also showed a 63 percent chance of a guilty verdict in Trump's ongoing hush-money trial.
That number was down from 87 percent in late April. But it still reflected a widespread belief that the establishment's banana republic-like persecution of Trump will result in a conviction.
Indeed, one could scarcely imagine a more fascinating juxtaposition of two different betting odds. On one hand, a strong majority of bettors expect a guilty verdict. On the other hand, another strong majority of bettors expect Trump to win the presidency.
Do those bettors suffer from cognitive dissonance?
Not likely. In fact, considering state-by-state polls, the establishment's record of tyrannical vindictiveness and the mood of an awakening electorate, those two bets make all the sense in the world.
As for polling, Trump's 1.1 percent head-to-head lead over Biden tells only a fraction of the story.
For one thing, the election will involve more than Trump and Biden. With Kennedy and other candidates added to the mix, Trump's lead in the RealClear Polling average increased to 1.8 percent.
More importantly, RealClear Polling has shown Trump holding small yet consistent leads in the presumptive swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Likewise, recent Democratic strongholds such as New Hampshire and Minnesota have trended toward Trump. In fact, both now belong in the swing-state category.
The same could hold true for deep-blue New Jersey and even deeper-blue New York. Biden won those states by 16 and 23 percentage points, respectively, in the 2020 presidential election. In recent weeks, however, Trump has held massive rallies in both states, as Biden's lead has shrunk to single digits.
Meanwhile, a poll released Wednesday showed Trump and Biden tied in Virginia. In 2020, Biden won the Old Dominion by more than 10 points.
Thus, bettors have plenty of polling evidence to justify their pro-Trump wagers.
Those same bettors have also seen the lengths to which the establishment and its minions will go in persecuting Trump and his supporters. With that in mind, bettors (and voters) have good reasons to expect a guilty verdict from a rigged trial.
Furthermore -- and here is the really significant revelation -- bettors might expect a Trump victory in the 2024 election in part because they also expect a guilty verdict in his ongoing trial.
In other words, bettors have taken the electorate's temperature. They recognize that many Americans have awakened to the establishment's diabolical authoritarianism. So they know that a Trump conviction would only drive the former president's poll numbers higher.
If they expected otherwise, they would bet on a conviction and a Biden re-election victory. But they do not. And that speaks volumes about how a majority of Americans view the tyrannical Biden regime.
