As such, Allium can link only about 6% of Polymarket’s political market portfolios to a country, so the firm says the figures should be read as directional rather than exact.
Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment before US market hours.
Meanwhile, another interesting thing is what Americans are betting on. Geopolitics accounted for 46% of US face value versus 36% for the platform as a whole, while elections garnered 16% of American wallets versus 32% for the entire platform, meaning the American crowd trades foreign wars at a rate nearly three times the rate of elections everyone else favors.
Of the twelve largest markets in the US cohort, five were bets on the Iran war. The largest, at $20.8 million, was a novelty market on whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would wear a suit.
Those are largely regulated markets that American places don’t have. The accommodating US arm of Kalshi and Polymarket focuses mainly on economic data, rate decisions and elections, so demand flows to the offshore version that lists regime changes and ceasefires.
The pattern regulators might fear is one that the data doesn’t show.
In the markets that were resolved, US portfolios backed the winner 81.9% of the time, versus 80.3% for everyone else, effectively no advantage, and the returns, if they held, were almost identical.
