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# Polymarket vs. Polling

How is Polymarket better than traditional / legacy polling?

January 11, 2026

While legacy polls capture a snapshot of opinion at a specific moment, they are often outdated by the time they’re published—sometimes lagging by several days. In contrast, Polymarket reflects real-time sentiment as events unfold, offering continuous updates and a more dynamic understanding of public opinion.

Studies show that prediction markets like Polymarket tend to outperform traditional pollsters because participants are financially incentivized to be correct. This creates more thoughtful, data-driven predictions. Research by James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, has highlighted how markets like these can be more accurate than polls due to the “collective intelligence” of diverse participants. Additionally, the Iowa Electronic Markets, an academic research project at the University of Iowa, has consistently demonstrated the superior accuracy of prediction markets like Polymarket over traditional polling in predicting political outcomes.

Polymarket provides a constantly updating picture of public sentiment, offering a degree of accuracy and timeliness that traditional pollsters, who typically report data that is days old, simply cannot match.

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