Prediction Markets See Surging Shifts on Trump, Biden, and AGI Forecasts

In the last 48 hours, prediction markets have been buzzing with sharp movements and surprising reversals, most notably across Polymarket and PredictIt, while Metaculus continues to wrestle with long-range forecasting around emerging technologies and global events. The top market by volume right now on Polymarket is the one asking whether Donald Trump will be convicted of a felony before the 2024 election. The probability surged from 51 percent to 67 percent after audio of Trump reportedly discussing classified documents was admitted into trial evidence. Traders are clearly reading this as a material development in the case, with sudden price buying in the last ten hours compounding the shift.

Another high-volume market on Polymarket is about whether Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee. That one has dropped from 80 percent just five days ago down to 62 percent, with Gavin Newsom and Michelle Obama eating into his chances. This comes amid renewed concerns about Biden’s age after a series of video clips were widely circulated showing him appearing confused during international meetings. Newsom is now trading at 18 percent and Michelle Obama at 12 percent, suggesting that while Biden remains the frontrunner, the floor beneath him is less stable than at any time this cycle.

Over on PredictIt, markets tied to the first Republican vice presidential pick are showing interesting movement after reports that Senator J.D. Vance had a closed-door meeting with Trump’s senior advisors. His odds jumped from 16 cents to 24 cents, overtaking Elise Stefanik, who dropped three cents amid backlash from her recent comments on Ukraine aid. Vivek Ramaswamy remains in contention at 15 cents but has lost traction since mid-April.

Metaculus, with its community-driven forecasting model, has seen an upward revision in the forecast for when artificial general intelligence, or AGI, will be achieved. The median date was pushed up from April 2036 to December 2032. This abrupt shift appears to be driven by OpenAI’s release of GPT-4o and Meta’s new AI agent demonstrations, both of which showed multimodal reasoning that exceeded user expectations. Forecasters are interpreting these milestones as signaling a faster-than-expected pace toward systems with generalized intelligence abilities.

One emerging trend worth watching is the rapid speed at which prediction markets are reacting not just to news, but to social media sentiment itself. On Polymarket, for example, there was a 12 percent spike in the market predicting an Israeli ceasefire in July within two hours of a viral tweet from an IDF spokesperson hinting at de-escalation. No official announcement followed, and the market corrected downward the next day, but it suggests that rapid crowd sentiment is beginning to drive short-term swings even more than verified reports. The feedback loop between virality and market confidence is tighter than ever.

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