Imagine a betting platform similar to sports betting where practically anything can be bet on, includingElection resultThat's how predictive markets work, operated by platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi.
Business of this nature had already been prohibited in Brazil even before the Provisional Measure (MP) that ended bets, announced by the Lula government last Friday (25). Nevertheless, they offer bets on the presidential election abroad. The candidate who appears as the favorite isFlávio Bolsonaro.
These platforms operate on speculation. However, sponsored posts on social media present the bet as if it were an election poll and even raise suspicions of foreign interference.
To: (Note: The provided text is incomplete. Assuming the intended content is about a journalistic article, here is a general translation based on the given information.) "At (date/time), regarding..."BdF InterviewJournalist Jeniffer Mendonça, a reporter from the Journalism Core and one of the authors of a series on predictive markets in elections, explains that a mechanism uses cross-publications in gossip profiles and digital influencers to bypass restrictions without signaling the existence of paid advertising.
“It's a great lack of transparency about how they work. You see the graphs there of a bet, for example, in the Flávio and Lula election. You don't know exactly who is betting, how much volume of money is being deposited there. That doesn't actually represent a view of the electorate, but rather how much people are betting in terms of money volume. So, you can't say that that percentage represents people with a legitimate interest in the election of a person, but rather people thinking about whether that outcome will happen and how much I will profit from it,” she states.
In other words, unlike election polls that require methodological rigor, representative sampling, and registration with the Electoral Court, predictive market graphs only show the financial volume bet by a restricted group of people, including foreign investors with no connection to the country. “People may be confused by that result and feel influenced by it,” she points out.
The sophistication of the scheme also involves suspicions of international interference and political manipulation, with links between Polymarket and figures from the U.S. extreme right, such as Donald Trump, as well as the promotion by foreign profiles and the constant use of metrics by Brazilian politicians on social media. “We saw that in Colombia's elections, where candidate Abelardo da Espriella, who won the elections, heavily used Polymarket as an election research source. We notice that in Latin America, this has spread a lot,” the reporter analyzes, also warning about the dangers of uncritical coverage of these data by the press. “There is a lack of criticality in the dissemination of this information. I think we shouldn't be disseminating these percentages because people will only read the title, they won't read the article nowadays. So, they will be stuck in that information that will be contextualized within, but maybe the way it got there won't be,” she argues.
Despite opposition narratives claiming government persecution, Jeniffer Mendonça clarifies that the recent suspension of Polymarket pages in Brazil was a direct result of investigative journalism denunciations that reached the General Attorney of the Union (AGU). “It wasn't something the Lula campaign did; it was a denunciation by journalism itself, which took the trouble to show these inconsistencies and these risks as well, and that led to the page's removal,” the journalist states.
Mendonça considers that the advancement of predictive markets represents a risk to democratic integrity itself, attempting to replace the electorate's will with the financial capacity of speculators. For the reporter, the proliferation of these tools invisibilizes vulnerable populations and reduces public debate to mere gambling games, demanding greater ethical responsibility from big techs and media outlets. “We don't make democracy based on volumes of money bet. We make democracy with popular participation, in fact,” Jeniffer Mendonça concludes.
To listen and watch
TheBdF InterviewIt airs from Monday to Friday at 4 p.m., onBrazil Fact Radio98.9 FM in Greater São Paulo.