🔮Don’t Talk About Eating Cats

And other debating tips from Polymarket

When the US presidential debate kicked off at 9PM Tuesday night, Donald Trump was the 52% favorite to win the election. Ninety minutes later, Kamala Harris had closed the gap, ending the night at a 49-49 tie.

At key campaign events like the debates, the Polymarket general election odds act as the world’s largest and highest-stakes focus group. Users react in real-time to each moment as they update their handicapping in a market that has seen nearly a billion dollars of trading volume. Here’s a look at how the most consequential moments of the debate shifted Harris’s election odds in real time. 

Since the changes in odds were so tiny overall - taking place within a narrow band of three percentage points - this article uses the following emojis to mark the market’s direction at key moments. 

📈: Harris odds climbing

📉: Harris odds decreasing

Most of the action took place in the debate’s first hour. Not even an endorsement from Taylor Swift later in the night moved the needle. Polymarket users were placing 75% odds on her endorsement, so it’s possible that Swift was already priced into the market. 

📉The Surprise Handshake: Kamala Harris began the debate by walking across the stage to offer Trump a handshake, which seemed to catch him off guard at his podium. Before the debate, Polymarket put the chance of the candidates shaking hands at 30%. Was this a Harris gambit to throw Trump off his game? 

📈 Abortion: Harris’ odds climbed steadily during the discussion of abortion, seen as one of the most likely topics for both candidates to mention. Much has been made about moderator Linsey Davis giving Harris a boost by contradicting Trump’s statements about abortions after birth, however this moment does not stand out from the general uptrend for Harris during the segment.

📈 “Eating the dogs”. This was the defining moment of the debate. Following a Harris jab over people leaving Trump rallies early, the former president counter-punched by repeating claims from right wing social media about Haitian immigrants in Ohio:

“In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame.”

The moment, which sparked several viral remix clips, was the point of no return for Trump’s debate performance. From this point on, Harris would continue to make steady gains before plateauing at the one-hour mark. This turning point is even more obvious in another market on who would win in the post-debate polls.

The point of no return

While disastrous for Trump, this line was profitable for Polymarket users betting that he would mention the words “Springfield,” or “cat.” These markets were added to the mention market just two days before the debate as Trump began to work the story into his speeches. 

From here, it continued downhill for Trump:

📈“Transgender operations for illegal aliens.” Politifact called “mostly true” the Trump attack that Harris supported a proposal for government-funded gender reassignment surgeries for detained illegal immigrants. But Trump’s delivery at this point was a bit frenzied and may have sounded outlandish coming on the heels of the Haitian dog snatchers. 

📈 “Nothing to do” with January 6. Trump deflected responsibility for January 6th, instead pinning the blame on Nancy Pelosi whom he says declined his requests to send troops to the capitol. While few pundits have mentioned this moment, this segment saw a stronger jump in Harris’s odds than the abortion exchange. Her odds continued up on a remark that world leaders were laughing at Trump over his 2020 election denial. 

📉“Where is our president?: Trump managed to stop the bleeding as the debate moved on to foreign policy. In particular, one attack implying that Biden was MIA in the presidency touched a nerve. Trump:

We're playing with World War 3. And we have a president that we don't even know if he's -- where is our president? We don't even know if he's a president.

Moderators did not ask Harris any pointed questions on the health and performance of Joe Biden, or her potential involvement in any coverup of these while in office. The positive moves in Trump’s odds at this moment suggest that this could be an effective angle for Trump to exploit.

What Happens Next?

Rematch? The evening of the debate, a statement from Harris’ campaign challenged him to a rematch. On Truth Social, Trump was reluctant, but later appeared on Fox & Friends and seemed open to some Fox moderators but not others. Odds for a second debate on Fox News spiked, but remain a longshot.

Campaign Shakeup? Odds that Trump will fire one of his campaign managers Chris LaCivita or Susie Wiles were up slightly after the debate, but sill a longshot. 

Short Term Polling. Markets are bullish on the prospects for a Harris polling bounce in the week following the debate. 

Zoom Out

With the debate and Taylor Swift endorsement in the books, some were ready to call the race for Kamala. But the longer-range election markets tell a very different story: that the debate and Swift endorsement were more of a blip than a game-changer. 

All the action on debate night occurred within the band of about three percentage points in the overall election odds - odds that have traded in a tight range since early August. And the debate did not flip the polarity of any of the six or seven swing states that will decide the election. 

The key value of prediction markets is that they work in real time: no need to wait for polls to come back and models to update. Following Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump, large moves in his dropout odds were visible immediately. But in this case, the only large moves came in short-term markets, like who would gain in polls a week out. 

This race continues to look like two football teams trading control within a few yards of the 50-yard line. Small moments can have a big impact on who’s favored to win, but only because the fundamentals of the race are so close. Neither candidate has been able to open up a durable lead since Biden’s exit.

---

Disclaimer

Nothing in The Oracle is financial, investment, legal or any other type of professional advice. Anything provided in any newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be an endorsement of any type of activity or any particular market or product. Terms of Service on polymarket.com prohibit US persons and persons from certain other jurisdictions from using Polymarket to trade, although data and information is viewable globally.