What are Polymarket polls?

You’ll often hear people refer to the markets on Polymarket as “polls.” While it’s an easy comparison to make, it’s fundamentally wrong. A Polymarket market and a traditional poll are two entirely different beasts, and the difference is what gives the platform its predictive power.

A traditional poll asks for your opinion. “Who are you voting for?” or “Do you approve of this policy?” It’s a snapshot of sentiment, and it costs you nothing to answer. You can say what you think your friends want to hear, what you wish were true, or just what you feel at that moment. There are no consequences.

Polymarket, on the other hand, doesn’t care about your opinion. It cares about your conviction. It asks, “What do you think will actually happen?” and then follows it up with, “Prove it.”

This is the core concept of “skin in the game.” To participate, you have to buy shares with real money. This simple mechanism filters out all the noise. The wishful thinking, the virtue signaling, the casual opinions—it all disappears when your wallet is on the line. You’re not just casting a vote; you’re making an investment in being right.

This is why the debate over how accurate are Polymarket polls is so fascinating. They aren’t polls at all; they are live financial markets that aggregate the weighted knowledge of thousands of participants. The price of a share isn’t a measure of popularity; it’s a measure of the market’s collective belief, backed by capital.

So when you see a market on Polymarket, don’t think of it as a poll. Think of it as a dynamic, unfiltered measure of what a highly engaged and financially motivated crowd believes the future holds. It’s a crucial distinction to grasp when you’re learning what is Polymarket.