Polymarket Nails NYC Democratic Mayoral Primary Upset, Nears $1B Unicorn Valuation

New York City wakes up Wednesday morning to a surprise: Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic mayoral primary. While pollsters initially dismissed the progressive candidate, punters on blockchain-based prediction platform Polymarket correctly called his victory ahead of official confirmation.

Before Tuesday’s vote, conventional polls favored former Governor Andrew Cuomo.

But sentiment among participants on Polymarket shifted rapidly toward Mamdani, after an Emerson College poll released Monday morning highlighted his strength in ranked-choice voting scenarios.

Polymarket wasn’t alone in responding to the Emerson poll results. Kalshi, another prominent prediction market, reacted even faster, initially showing Cuomo with higher odds before sharply pivoting toward Mamdani in response to the poll.

Kalshi, which does not utilize blockhain infrastructure, reacted to the Emerson College poll with a sharper and faster swing than Polymarket. On Kalshi, Andrew Cuomo’s odds dropped from over 70% to 46% within hours of the poll’s release, while Mamdani surged from 27.2% to parity, according to data on Kalshi, which showed Cuomo at 73% as the poll went out.

By election morning, both platforms had converged on a near-certain Mamdani victory, ahead of official confirmation.

One of the biggest winners was a Polymarket user known as “GayPride,” who wagered $132,926 on Mamdani at 49.2% odds. The bet paid out approximately $268,000, illustrating both the high-stakes nature and earning potential of decentralized prediction markets.

Polymarket’s success with forecasting Mamdani’s surprise victory has reignited interest in its predictive capabilities; last year, it correctly predicted that Donald Trump would win the U.S. presidential election.

Polymarket’s $200m funding round

Polymarket’s latest win comes as the company closes in on a $200 million funding round at a valuation north of $1 billion, according to separately sourced reports from Reuters and Bloomberg on Tuesday.

The raise is reportedly being led by Founders Fund, the venture firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, known for early investments in Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI, as well as backing frontier projects like Sentient, an open-source AI initiative.

The vote of confidence from institutional backers like Founders Fund signals growing acceptance of blockchain-powered prediction platforms such as Polymarket.

Alex Solleiro, co-founder of DASTAN, the company behind both Decrypt and decentralized prediction market Myriad (which did not run a market on this particular election), commented on the significance of Polymarket’s achievement.

“Prediction markets once again show that they can break the news faster than media and predict elections better than polls and experts,” Solleiro said. “We have entered a new era in how information is sourced, shared, and incentivized.”