Prediction Markets Reflect Shifting Sentiment on Trump, Harris, and AI Breakthroughs

The last forty-eight hours have brought some unexpected twists across the top prediction markets, signaling shifting public sentiment and perhaps early clues about what's coming next in global politics, tech, and science. On Polymarket, the top market by volume has once again been the one asking whether Donald Trump will win the 2024 U.S. presidential election. After hovering around 58 cents most of the past week, his contract price surged to 62 cents late yesterday, marking a four-point spike in less than 12 hours. This movement followed the news that an appeals court ruled largely in his favor regarding trial scheduling, giving his campaign a perception of momentum and reducing legal uncertainty in the eyes of many bettors.

On PredictIt, one of the sharpest moves came in the Democratic nomination market, where Kamala Harris saw a sudden uptick. Her contract jumped from 14 cents to 19 cents after an interview with a prominent political strategist went viral, suggesting that key donors are quietly positioning for a post-Biden scenario. While Biden remains the frontrunner at 72 cents, the flurry of buying into Harris is generating speculation that insiders don’t see the nomination as completely locked.

Meanwhile, over on Metaculus, which deals in probabilistic forecasts rather than monetary wagers, the odds that artificial general intelligence will be achieved before the year 2030 ticked up to 28 percent, up from 25 percent just a week ago. This may seem like a small change, but in a slow-moving, expert-driven platform like Metaculus, it marks a meaningful shift. This bump appears to have followed recent statements from leading AI labs forecasting rapid breakthroughs, along with news that several major academic benchmarks in reasoning and translation were surpassed this month.

Among the most surprising changes over the past two days was the Polymarket contract on whether Apple will release a generative artificial intelligence product by the end of this year. Odds had been languishing at 38 percent, but shot up to 51 percent after Bloomberg reported that Apple has staff dedicated to building tools akin to ChatGPT. While no official product has been announced, this market swing suggests bullishness that Apple could reveal something concrete as early as its upcoming developer conference.

One emerging trend worth watching is the increasing intersection between political forecasting and artificial intelligence narratives. Several mixed-topic markets, such as whether an AI-related scandal will impact the 2024 U.S. election, have started getting traction on both Polymarket and PredictIt. As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in both real policy and public discourse, prediction markets may play a role in both tracking and shaping opinion on this rapidly evolving landscape.

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