Gamblers are betting on Gov. Shapiro for Harris’ VP pick as election predictions flood online markets

Who will Vice President Kamala Harris choose as her running mate? Online gamblers think they have it figured out.

Harris, who on Monday secured enough state delegation endorsements to secure the Democratic nomination following President Joe Biden’s abrupt exit from the race, has yet to indicate who she will choose as her second-in-command.

Short lists of potential picks have circulated for weeks, including an array of prominent Democratic governors and senators, with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro emerging as a front-runner in recent days.

But online, election betting markets have Shapiro pegged as one of Harris’ top picks — and users are betting millions on whether he or other contenders such as Kentucky Gov. Andy Bashear or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly will earn her nod.

More than $16 million has poured into the outcome prediction platform Polymarket to bet on Harris’ vice presidential selection, signaling the popularity of unregulated political gambling during an election cycle already marked by dramatic twists and turns.

“Betting Shapiro right now is something I really love,” said KJ, an Arizona-based political gambler who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the illegality of betting on election outcomes. “I think his price is too low,” continued the 29-year-old, who mentioned that he bet $500 on Shapiro’s odds on Tuesday. “I think he is the guy.”

From the casino floor to smart phones

The flood of vice presidential prediction money comes as the gaming industry transitions its focus from the casino floor to the smartphone screens of a young and online cohort of gamblers. Betting on election outcomes is illegal in the United States, though platforms like PredictIt and Polymarket have skirted regulations through academic loopholes or by basing their activities outside of the country.

Earlier this week, Polymarket users had bet that Shapiro would be the leading vice presidential contender; as of Tuesday afternoon, the governor had fallen to second place behind Kelly, with users predicting Shapiro had a 21% chance of being the nominee. PredictIt, which boasts more than 80,000 users, also had Shapiro in the lead until Tuesday, when Kelly moved ahead.

» READ MORE: Gov. Josh Shapiro neither confirms nor denies he’s in the running for VP nomination

PredictIt users can bet anywhere from a couple cents to about a dollar on a variety of outcomes related to current events, such as whether former President Donald Trump will secure a second term in office or if Biden will resign in coming months. Other options take speculation to the extreme, such as one in 2020 which allowed users to bet on when the World Health Organization would declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

Bettors range from casual newsreaders to political aficionados, and placing a wager involves buying “shares” of a specific outcome that can be cashed out at any time. Shares of Shapiro as the vice presidential choice on Polymarket, for example, were worth 21 cents late Tuesday afternoon, and bettors have wagered more than $800,000 on the governor’s potential selection.

KJ, the Arizona gambler, discovered Polymarket in 2018 after he lost his job as a business analyst and became awash with free time. He’s since spent thousands, betting on the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterms, and is part of a 20-person Discord server where campaign developments and candidate odds are under constant discussion. He said he sees the industry’s growth as an extension of the sports betting craze that began after the Sunbelt state legalized digital sports books in recent years.

“You have Biden dropping out, anything could come at any moment,” KJ said. “You have to be very informed… I know traders who spend seven, eight hours a day reading political news and trying to be around for all the updates you see on Twitter.”

Election betting chatter has spread from gambling platforms to social media, particularly on X (formerly Twitter), where breaking campaign news is delivered to numbers-hungry users at lightning speed.

On Monday, Trump posted to his social media platform Truth Social a screenshot of Polymarket predictions originally posted from an X account called “Interactive Polls.”

Though Polymarket predictions are not considered traditional polling, Trump appeared to highlight that the predictions platform had favored him winning the presidency over Harris by a margin of 64-29 — a figure not reflected in national polling, which places him within single digits of the presumptive Democratic nominee.

‘Elections need to be decided by voters’

The extension of gambling culture from digital sports books like FanDuel to sites that allow users to bet on democratic contests is leaving federal regulators racing to tamp down a market they say is susceptible to manipulation and threatens the sanctity of elections.

“We’re not an election cop,” said Steven Adamske, the public affairs director for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Washington agency that regulates this type of trading. “It opens up a can of worms far greater than anybody can police — elections need to be decided by voters, not by people coming in betting against it or for it.”

The commission is engaged in lawsuits with both PredictIt and Polymarket. The platforms are fighting the agency’s attempt to impose restrictions, though the threat of regulatory crackdown has hardly curbed betting activity. And in a major financial develpoment for Polymarket, billionaire conservative donor Peter Thiel recently assisted in raising around $70 million in funding for the platform.

KJ acknowledged that not all bets are made with a clean conscious, including his bets on people who he said are “abjectly terrible for the country,” as well as controversial political brands such as France’s National Rally.

Meanwhile, political betting has resulted in scandal in the United Kingdom, where members of the Conservative party and security officials are being investigated for using insider information to bet on the results of the recent election called by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

“That is classic insider trading,” said Adamske. “People can make a case, or at least a complaint, that the election was manipulated by somebody taking too large a position. [Betting platforms] give the ability for people to game the system by allowing this kind of gambling.”