Polymarket vs Polls vs Experts: Why Prediction Markets Often Win (2026)
Prediction markets like Polymarket often outperform polls and expert forecasts. This article explains why—incentives, aggregation, and updating—and how to use them as one input among many.
Polls: what they’re good and bad at
Polls measure stated preferences at a point in time. They’re useful for direction and demographics, but they suffer from non-response bias, question wording, and the gap between “who people say they’ll vote for” and “who actually shows up.” They also snap-shot the past; they don’t automatically incorporate new information the way a live market does.
Experts and pundits
Experts bring domain knowledge, but they’re often overconfident, slow to update, or influenced by narrative. Famous studies (e.g. Tetlock) show that “superforecasters” who update probabilities in response to evidence tend to beat many experts. Prediction markets reward similar behavior: putting money where your mouth is and updating as news arrives.
Why prediction markets often do better
- Incentives: Traders risk real money, so there’s a cost to being wrong. That tends to reduce noise and overconfidence.
- Aggregation: The price aggregates many views. You get a single number (e.g. 68% YES) that reflects the crowd’s current belief.
- Updating: Prices move as news and sentiment change. You see a live probability, not a stale poll from last week.
That doesn’t mean markets are always right. They can be wrong, manipulated in thin markets, or slow to react. But over many events, well-liquid prediction markets have a strong track record versus polls and unstructured expert opinion.
Polymarket in practice
Polymarket has become a major venue for political, macro, and crypto-related markets. Its prices are widely cited as a real-time read on sentiment and implied probability. Use them as one input: combine with news, on-chain data, and your own view—don’t treat the number as gospel.
Using this for crypto and macro
For crypto, prediction markets on Fed decisions, regulation, and elections can inform risk-on/risk-off. High attention in a market (e.g. big volume) often precedes volatility. We surface hot Polymarket events by volume so you can see where the crowd is focused without treating it as a crystal ball.
See live spreads on our dashboard and hot Polymarket events on our prediction markets page.