Over the last year, prediction markets have grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. Prediction markets, such as sites like Polymarket, Kalshi and Robinhood, allow bettors to put down money on the likelihood of an event happening — including for political races in Oregon. Market sites show users are placing their bets on who the Republican candidate will be for Oregon’s governor. OPB politics reporter Dirk Vanderhart covered this story. He joins us to share more.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Who do you think is going to win the Republican primary for Oregon governor, and how much money are you willing to wager on that question? $100,000 have already been spent. It’s just a tiny drop in the betting deluge that is the modern predictions market. It’s happening on sites like Kalshi, Robinhood and Polymarket. They allow bettors to put down money on just about anything, including for political races in Oregon. OPB political reporter Dirk VanderHart just wrote a story about this and he joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.
Dirk VanderHart: Fantastic to be here, Dave.
Miller: What made you want to report on this?
VanderHart: You know, we’ve been digging into this race, talking to people about it, but beyond the normal things you might look at – events that are being held or fundraising – there’s just not been any great picture about how people are feeling about the top three or four candidates. There haven’t been polls that have been public that I’ve seen at least. There haven’t been debates yet.
So, as I poked around for some information, a number of people pointed me to these prediction markets as a possible indicator of where things stand, and that made me curious. I’ve not paid any attention to these things. Made me curious what these things might be able to tell us about the race.
Miller: I mentioned the scale of money here, something like $100,000 at least on these three sites combined. People have been able to bet on all kinds of things though, for a long time now. What’s new about this?
VanderHart: Actually prediction markets aren’t very new in terms of elections. The University of Iowa actually has sponsored markets on presidential and congressional elections, I think dating back to 1988. There’s a platform called PredictIt that began, I believe, in 2014. What’s really changed though in the last couple of years is just this explosion that has opened up prediction markets to not just elections.
So as I say in the story, there are markets for everything from the daily high temperature in Finland, the odds that Christ is going to return next year, there are really just unlimited things you can bet on these days. I think, as I say, this really took off in 2024. I had looked at them as toxic, just a thing that traps people in gambling addiction. But around elections, there is some scholarship that says they can actually be pretty helpful in divining where things sit.
Miller: Is it possible to know who the bettors are, where they live? I mean, are these diehard Oregon political junkies who listen to OPB Politics Now – as everybody should to have their finger on the pulse of Oregon politics – or are these just, I don’t know, randos from around the world who have a couple of dollars to spend/waste?
VanderHart: I think unfortunately it is far, far more the latter, Dave. Actually there is not a lot of public information I could find on most markets, but if you go on Polymarket, it does show which users have taken leading positions in this GOP primary, and you can click on those people’s profile and see what kinds of things they’re betting on. And everyone I clicked on was clicking on a ton of stuff, you know, you can make a bet on whether President Trump is going to say a certain sequence of words in some upcoming appearance or a soccer match. I mean, they are betting on a wide range of things, it’s not just like Northwest politics.
Miller: Which makes it seem like these are people who are more interested in betting than Oregon politics per se.
VanderHart: And for whatever reason have keyed in on this race and this market as something that they can get an advantage in.
Miller: So what do these markets say about the race right now?
VanderHart: As of this morning… I’m sure it’s changed. As of this morning when I checked, they were pretty consistent. State Senator Christine Drazen, who is the 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee, was leading slightly with a 44% chance of victory on all of the three platforms that we have been talking about. State Representative Ed Diehl was really nipping at her heels in all three of those. And farther back, I think maybe to many people’s surprise was Chris Dudley, the former Trailblazer center who ran for governor in 2010 and just barely lost to Democrat John Kitzhaber that year.
Miller: Right. That does seem like maybe the biggest surprise for people who are just tuning in to this race, a well-known Oregonian whose campaign did get a lot of money this year from Phil Knight. Why do you think he’s so far down in these betting odds?
VanderHart: That was the big question for me. To me, I looked at it initially and said he’s definitely underpriced. I mean, conventional wisdom is that if you’re just…
Miller: I got to just say, it’s so weird even to hear that phrase. We’re talking about politics, but OK.
VanderHart: I don’t like it, but here we are, Dave.
Miller: So you thought maybe underpriced.
VanderHart: He’s a big name. He’s got as much money as he wants. If Phil Knight is really backing him, he’s going to have money to get his message out to voters. So that felt wrong. And you know, some of the people I talked to said, “Yeah, that feels wrong. This market must be just wrong here.”
But then I also talked to a lot of political consultants and I said, “Before I tell you what the market is, tell me your sense of the state of the race.” And to a person, they said Drayson feels like she’s in the lead. Diehl could be a threat and we can get to Diehl. And Dudley feels like he’s running a little bit of an anemic campaign. He was pro-choice in 2010. That doesn’t feel like it’s gonna translate to the 2026 GOP electorate, and his message hasn’t been this sort of red meat GOP thing. It’s felt a little more like it’s for a general election where you’re making the case to moderates...
Miller: But you have to get there first.
VanderHart: Exactly. And that is why I heard a lot of skepticism about Dudley. And so, does the market see this, or something else? That is the question I can’t answer.
Miller: All right, so to Ed Diehl, and his relatively good odds. Who is he?
VanderHart: He’s a two-term state representative from Scio in the mid-Willamette Valley. You know, if he’s on people’s radar at all, it’s likely because he played a leading role last fall in this campaign that forced Democrats’ plans to hike gas taxes and some other transportation taxes onto the ballot. That is very likely going to doom them.
Through that campaign, Diehl and his allies have said Republicans gotta win here, and they were also able to amass this list of motivated GOP voters that he is counting on to help drive him to victory. The downside of that is that Diehl has raised a lot, lot less than Drazen or Dudley. He actually had to loan himself $100,000 recently to help his campaign get the message out.
Miller: How accurate are these markets in general?
VanderHart: That is the big question, right? I mean, that is a point of contention, and I don’t think it’s something we can know for sure, obviously about this race. I think there are studies, as I said, that point to things like presidential races, for instance, the presidential race in 2024, when billions of dollars were wagered in these markets. Studies have looked at that and found that there were some relatively positive things they could say.
One, these markets are very responsive to day-to-day happenings: news articles, polls, debates, just because they’re constantly moving, and one study also found that bettors on Polymarket were generally more accurate than polls at predicting the outcome. There’s this wisdom of the crowds theory that if you get enough people with enough information on there, they are gonna come away with a pretty good conclusion.
Miller: But there’s a huge difference in terms of the amount of coverage and data and speculation about a presidential election compared to a gubernatorial primary in a relatively small state – a beloved state for us, but still a relatively small state where there’s so much less information. How does that play into this?
VanderHart: Yeah, even though I consider $100,000 a lot of money, in the context of these markets, it is clearly not. And the question is whether the relatively light amount of betting that goes on is actually revealing things as they are; particularly, as these bettors don’t have public polls to help them to go on. They are making judgments on other factors that might or might not be sound, and I am certainly not saying in our coverage that these markets are telling us the truth.
Miller: Are there rules about who can bet on these markets? I’m thinking about, you know, professional athletes like the NBA or Major League Baseball. Pete Rose comes to mind. Folks who either are under investigation or were sanctioned for betting on their own sports. Could anything prevent Ed Diehl or Chris Dudley or Phil Knight from betting on this race?
VanderHart: I might be wrong here and I don’t know the full scope. I don’t think there are rules against a candidate’s supporters at least betting on the markets if they think they have a really good shot. That does create concerns about market manipulation and whether you’re juicing your own name to increase your viability. I’m just not sure that that is against the rules. It may be, and I just don’t know.
Miller: You could put a poll out and spread it. That’s had dubious methodology, and people just have to, I guess it’s caveat emptor. You just have to know, as a political consumer, do I trust this poll? And maybe you’re saying, maybe it’s the same thing for these betting markets too.
VanderHart: I mean, one person I talked to, John Horvick, a pollster, he said, you know, Phil Knight supports Chris Dudley. What’s stopping him from putting $20,000 in on one of these markets, effectively getting Dudley’s name out there?
Miller: And then making people think, Dudley’s doing better, so I will vote for him.
VanderHart: Right. And maybe he is doing better. Again, we don’t know that these markets are real. But the other thing is there definitely are at least platform rules against insider trading. Those have been stepped up in some cases, since we heard news recently that there were some really lucrative bets placed on whether the U.S. was going to attack Iran right before the U.S. attacked Iran, it felt pretty clear someone with high-level knowledge had placed a bet and made a lot of money.
That’s also aided by the fact that some of these are done via cryptocurrency and anonymous wallets and things that frankly I don’t understand a lot. So, those are technically illegal or not allowed, and I think there is a lot of skepticism about whether some of those rules are actually effective.
There’s also people that would say, actually insider trading can be good for these markets if all you want is the best version of the truth. If you want the best possible information, someone who actually knows something real could make these more accurate. Now that doesn’t help if you are a person who is on the other side of a bet in the market that is about to clean your clock.
Miller: Right. That only helps if you care about these as predictors of the truth or what’s gonna happen as opposed to a way to make money.
VanderHart: Correct.
Miller: Just briefly, did the campaigns of these various candidates have anything to say to you about these prediction markets?
VanderHart: Not a lot. I didn’t hear back from Dudley’s folks. I would say Drazen’s people were very, very skeptical that the people that are involved in these markets have any real knowledge. They are looking into their own polls. Diehl told me he thinks this could be a reflection of the race. He thinks he and Drazen are neck and neck.
Miller: Dirk, thanks very much.
VanderHart: My Pleasure.
Miller: Dirk VanderHart is a member of OPB’s political reporting team.
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