Donald Trump shocked the experts once again by winning the Presidency.
Trump’s win shouldn’t have been considered that much of an upset.
But a gambler revealed the secret that led to him winning $28 million betting on Trump.
Gambler bets big on Trump and wins big
Throughout the 2024 campaign, the betting site Polymarket showed Donald Trump as a favorite.
That’s because a “whale” – a gambler with a big bank account willing to bet big – plunked down $30 million on Trump to win the election.
The gambler in question was a French financial trader named Théo.
When Trump won the election, Théo walked away with $48 million profit.
Théo told the Wall Street Journal he thought the polls were overestimating Kamala Harris’ support.
In email and zoom communications with the Journal, Théo explained he bet on the fact that all the media polls were wrong because they were biased towards Kamala Harris.
Théo explained he concluded media outlets constructed their polls to produce results biased towards the candidate they supported.
“In France this is different!! The pollster credibility is more important: they want to be as close as possible to the actual results. Culture is different on this,” Théo wrote to the Journal.
Théo explained he looked at polls which asked respondents who they thought their neighbors were voting for.
Those polls – especially in the Midwest battlegrounds – all showed people believed their neighbors were voting for Trump.
This phenomenon represented the “shy” Trump voter.
Why the polls were wrong
“To solve this problem, Théo argued that pollsters should use what are known as neighbor polls that ask respondents which candidates they expect their neighbors to support. The idea is that people might not want to reveal their own preferences but will indirectly reveal them when asked to guess who their neighbors plan to vote for,” the Journal exclusively reported.
“Théo cited a handful of publicly released polls conducted in September using the neighbor method alongside the traditional method. These polls showed Harris’s support was several percentage points lower when respondents were asked who their neighbors would vote for, compared with the result that came from directly asking which candidate they supported,” the Journal continued.
Théo commissioned his own polling using a major American pollster to measure the neighbor effect.
And these polls, Théo revealed, showed Trump winning the election easily.
Théo predicted Trump winning 49 or 50 percent of the popular vote and six of seven battlegrounds.
Trump sits at 50 percent of the popular vote and won all seven battleground states.
Théo’s model of judging polls based on who people said their neighbors were voting for proved more accurate than famed election forecaster Nate Silver’s model, which showed polls overestimating Kamala Harris.
Polls understated Trump. AGAIN. For a 3rd time. https://t.co/8s3tJiUipI
— Rufus (@prometheus233) November 9, 2024
2024 marked the first election in history that the polls were wrong three straight times in the same direction.
But that’s because for the first time a candidate like Donald Trump ran in three straight elections.
And anyone studying the polling in the first two elections would have known that the pollsters admitted they never corrected the methods which led to them missing on the Trump vote in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Théo recognized the flaw in the polling.
And his astute observation led him to walking away with a cool $48 million in profits.
