When Polymarket Called the Election Before CNN

Picture this: it's election night, the anchors are sweating through their makeup, the touch screens are glitching, and Wolf Blitzer is saying "it's too early to call" for the forty-seventh time. Meanwhile, on Polymarket, the outcome had been priced above 90% for six hours.

Six. Hours.

The Pundits Never Learn

Here's the thing about cable news on election night — it's not information. It's entertainment dressed up as analysis. Every "too close to call" is a reason for you to keep watching through the next commercial break. Every "key race alert" is a dopamine hit designed to keep eyeballs glued to screens selling you pharmaceutical ads.

Prediction markets don't need your eyeballs. They need your conviction. And conviction, when backed by real capital, has a funny way of being accurate.

Follow the Money, Not the Makeup

The 2024 cycle proved it beyond any reasonable doubt: Polymarket traders — a chaotic mix of degens, data nerds, and political junkies — consistently outperformed billion-dollar news operations with armies of pollsters and analysts. Not by a little. By a lot.

And the beautiful part? Nobody on Polymarket has a "senior political correspondent" title. Nobody gets a book deal for being wrong in an eloquent way. You're either right and you profit, or you're wrong and you lose money. That's it. That's the whole system.

The Real Question

So why does anyone still watch election night coverage? Habit. Spectacle. The same reason people go to the circus even though they know the lion isn't going to eat anyone.

But if you actually want to know what's happening — skip the cable news circus and check the markets. The signal is there. It's always been there. The only question is whether you're willing to trust math over makeup.

The consensus is a lagging indicator. The market is the truth. What's your edge?