Most Americans oppose betting on elections, government events, Reuters/Ipsos pol

[Perfectbaby]

The only problems I am seeing here is for just insiders not to utilise the opportunity because they believe that when it comes to elections or presidential elections, it would be easily revealed or jeopardised due to the person behind or close to government or currently acting president and whatever information gotten from them could be revealed that is why most people prohibited it.
I believe, if they prohibit it there wouldn’t be any leak information from an insider to make huge profits from their bet so this could be major reason for their prohibitions.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Do you think that survey is accurate?

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

I think 4,500 persons is a fair sample, but I think it really depends on how they conduct this survey.

I actually find it a stupid survey, no matter the sample. But that’s what pollsters do – they sometimes ask stupid questions.

Not allowed in sportsbooks but allowed in prediction markets, come on, they are the same just with different names.

Yeah, so it seems like, according to this survey, 'betting' on elections is considered bad but making predictions about who will be the next president in a similar way to trading futures on the stock market is allowed. Lol.

[Antotena]

It probably won't lead to manipulation but people are very easily mislead these days, especially the weak minded folks, the moment one candidate that having more people betting for them to win you will find that most who were apathetic to the election will end up voting for whoever was is leading in the bets and something like that can very easily be manipulated with mass false bets being placed on one candidate over the other.
Besides all that, Americans have preached rights to the point where y'all are allowed to do some really stupid things, where's the smartness in betting on your own presidential election, it shows how much of a joke the election is to most of y'all.

I think it will. There is high influence of elections with gambling since prediction market started. I watch how Polymarket was discussed during the last US presidential election. A day to election and Trump was leading with vote, people had more vote on Trump to win the election, that was clearly sending message to people to vote for Trump, election has not even needed and Trump was leading in the race. This is the kind of scenario they are trying to avoid in the upcoming election.

Let's me used my country as another example, the election is fast approaching this January, people are buying shares on prediction markets and guess what? The active president's has about 80% chance of winning. What does that tells you, they want people to assume that the active president is going to win and the rest are going to lose, that's how bad election results can be during election time.

[mak013]

~
Do you think that survey is accurate?

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

It could be accurate. The problem is what questions were asked. Maybe I missed it, but I only see the results in the article. I haven't found what questions the respondents were asked.
I don't think it would be used for manipulation. There are far more efficient ways to manipulate people. Personally, I think it's mostly for fun. But that's just the opinion of an ordinary citizen who doesn't have access to secret information.

[acroman08]

I do not know if this is initiated not to allow prediction market not to allow United States presidential election bet. 4506 people in the United States voted. The vote is not in favour of gamblers.

If I remember correctly, their Congress is trying to pass a bill that would prohibit prediction markets from making bet markets for elections.

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

Just think of it like this, people who want to win will most likely place a bet on the politicians that are projected to win in the prediction markets, and in turn, they would also vote for the politician they placed a bet on to try and make sure that their bet would win. This is how I think the "manipulation" would work, certain people would inflate the bets on a certain politician so others would also bet on that politician, and those who placed a bet on the politician with inflated bets would be influenced to vote for that politician to make sure that their bet would win.

[shinratensei_]

The polls means nothing. It's only created just to know how many americans are opposing the bet on the political events, and surprisingly, thousands people agreed to never allow betting on the political related events, which can easily be manipulated.
As for me, i also agree the political event should not be allowed to be placed as a contract event. It's a sensitive event. Isn't it George Santos's case enough to be used as an evidence?

[Elainebue]

60% opposing it is a pretty clear signal that most people arent comfortable with election betting. i get the appeal of prediction markets but betting on actual elections feels like a different issue when public trust is involved. do you think better regulation would change peoples minds or is the idea itself the problem

[Ishicryptic]

When we talk about election manipulations I think that trading on prediction sites to predict preferred candidate to win is not a major issue, rigging an election is the major manipulation that an electoral body should worry about so people should be free to predict and campaign for their preferred candidates. If an election is not rigged I don't think that insider information would come to play because it is the citizens on the streets that determines who wins an elections. Aside from election matters I believe that informants can get insider information to use and trade on the prediction market but gamblers or traders should be allowed to place their bets on events, if anybody is caught for manipulation let them face the law by themselves.

[free-bit.co.in]

Do you think that survey is accurate?

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

In my view, there is no reason to completely disbelieve this survey. Reuters/Ipsos surveyed US adults using probability based Knowledge Panel and weighted sample according to various demographic and political characteristic. So, this cannot be dismissed as merely personal opinion of few individual.

However, I would describe this as snapshot of public opinion. Its not any perfect reflection of views of all American. And we cannot conclude that prediction market lack any forecasting value simply because people oppose betting. I believe that prediction market aggregate information and expectation from various individual to provide useful forecast. Perhaps this is what they are afraid of.

[o48o]

The title of the topic in full: Most Americans oppose betting on elections, government events, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

I do not know if this is initiated not to allow prediction market not to allow United States presidential election bet. 4506 people in the United States voted. The vote is not in favour of gamblers.



There are also gambling sites that are not predication markets that allow bets on United States presidential election.

https://www.reuters.com/world/most-americans-oppose-betting-elections-government-events-reutersipsos-poll-2026-10-12/

Do you think that survey is accurate?

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

That's behind paywall, but i read a follow up article about this 2 days later: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/inside-booming-market-us-midterm-election-bets-2026-10-14/

Answering to your question, i think it's accurate as it's from reuters. We live in a quite big bubble where our special interest is cryptocurrencies and if you asked from here, you might get a different result.
And from what i read, people is US are disliking the whole prediction market system even with sports, so obviously they are disliking that when it comes to politics.

[KTChampions]

The title of the topic in full: Most Americans oppose betting on elections, government events, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

I do not know if this is initiated not to allow prediction market not to allow United States presidential election bet. 4506 people in the United States voted. The vote is not in favour of gamblers.



There are also gambling sites that are not predication markets that allow bets on United States presidential election.

https://www.reuters.com/world/most-americans-oppose-betting-elections-government-events-reutersipsos-poll-2026-10-12/

Do you think that survey is accurate?

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

You should have posted the entire article. It’s behind a paywall, so when I want to check some important details, I can’t. Actually, I think any links to content behind a paywall should be banned
That was the first point, now for the second: the exact wording matters. If they were asked, "Do you like the fact that prediction markets for political events exist?" - that’s one question. But if they were asked, "Should prediction markets for political events be banned?" - that’s something entirely different. I think you understand the differences. Overall, because of the paywall, I can’t say anything about this poll.

[DrBeer]

It has already been discussed in some threads that betting platforms can be viewed as prediction oracles, which means they can be used to manipulate people’s minds and influence elections or other equally significant events. A simple example: people will soon start placing bets en masse on a Republican Party victory and "Trump’s third term". The narrative will be simple: prediction platforms are based on knowledge not available to the majority - inside information, and so on. Plus, at the same time, they’ll launch similar massive bets on some very "tempting event" that will happen if the Republican Party wins. What will most people do? Most people will think:

Hmm… well, they definitely know who’s going to win, and there’ll even be "bonuses" like that, to hell with Trump’s failures and his anti-American policies, I’ll vote for the Republican Party, look how positive those predictions are!

P.S. Billions of dollars are easily allocated for events when "political survival" is at stake

[coin-investor]

Do you think that survey is accurate?

It depends on who commissioned the survey. Based on what I know, the survey companies create a questionnaire that favors those who commissioned the survey, but sometimes, if the results are overwhelming, it may not favor those who commissioned it

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

It can sway the votes of those who are uncertain who they want to vote., they are just going to bet because they have a chance to win cash based on who is leading on the survey.

[iv4n]

Most Americans oppose betting on elections, government events...

And? Just because most Americans oppose betting on elections, will casinos stop offering those markets? Who is crazy here?

I thought we learned that already... If there's a demand, someone will offer the market! People like to bet on these things, and Polymarket & Kalshi are good examples... And they are here to stay! People like to bet on these things, and nobody can stop this trend...

I don't place bets on political events, but it's obvious that many people like it!

[o48o]

Most Americans oppose betting on elections, government events...

And? Just because most Americans oppose betting on elections, will casinos stop offering those markets? Who is crazy here?

I thought we learned that already... If there's a demand, someone will offer the market! People like to bet on these things, and Polymarket & Kalshi are good examples... And they are here to stay! People like to bet on these things, and nobody can stop this trend...

I don't place bets on political events, but it's obvious that many people like it!

Where did the article or OP said that those should be stopped? But the whole idea of you thinking they couldn't be stopped is weird. Are laws new concept to you?

Yeah, people do things even when it's illegal, but it sure is slowing them down from getting to industry level in many cases.

If market demand was only criteria how we should decide what to allow in our societies, world would look even more like a slave trading dystopia.

[abaeze]

So, is there anyone here who thinks that betting on the US election or the support of the participants in the prediction has any influence on the US presidential election? Or it could be positive or negative support for the candidate standing in the election.

I don't know exactly why this permission was not given to the prediction market. But can this money somehow create a campaign for a particular candidate or influence the election? In fact, it is natural for people to have doubts about how accurate such surveys are. And nothing can be said for sure in advance about vote rigging because the one who loses the election always misinterprets the election.

[Mrbluntzy]

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

Likewise me, I don't think that by allowing people to bet on US presidential election can cause any form of electoral interference, so what is even the meaningful reason why they want to stop this? Or could it be because of how some government officials uses insider information to bet on such events, despite being warned not to take part in such bet. That's one reason that makes some sense but not totally because they can always enact law that will prevent politicians and every government officials from playing, perhaps there have been some officials that were caught.

[Lontor]

This explains the decline in betting activity in America, according to Gallup's latest survey, only 45% of American adults reported gambling in the past year, compared to 64% in 2016.

Of course you cannot expect the majority to favor gambling or even gamble because this data already shows that fewer Americans are participating.
And since this is election betting, they would be even less likely to support it as it could undermine the integrity of the election.

The three most common activities in this survey are all real world/physical gambling, what about online gambling? I don't forget that in 2020 Americans started gambling even more when there was a lock down.

This survey doesn't carry the side of online gambling activities of Americans, and I even doubt that they can be accurate about it, people find it more convenient to gamble using their smartphones today than the old days of getting down to a nearby casino house.

[Junii]

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

I believe that the opinion of people against the election betting and overall election manipulation is two different things. Betting on any candidate does not change his/her image or votes and also does not give guarantee that the result of election are manipulated. May be on some levels there are chances of risk like insider information and sometime fake news like we see in crypto market few months ago by trump but that does not mean that every prediction market is harmful. 

[el che]

Do you think that survey is accurate?

I do not think this kind of service is necessary. I do not see a way betting on United States presidential election can lead to manipulations.

I think 4,500 persons is a fair sample, but I think it really depends on how they conduct this survey. Moreover, I guess manipulating betting odds aren't the same as manipulating the actual election results. Even if they ban these prediction markets, people can still find a way to bet through some offshore gambling sites. What's the point of banning them more than to regulate them properly? I think the latter makes more sense.

On the topic of manipulation, you can't buy an election outcome on a betting site but you can manipulate the narrative. Whales place massive bets on platforms Kalshi or Polymarket to artificially bump up a candidate's odds, using those numbers to generate fake momentum in news headlines. The election itself isn't rigged by the bet but the public perception surrounding it gets manipulated.