• By Leonardo Coelho
• June 16, 2026

Alongside election polls, Brazilian news consumers must now get used to a new controversial tool used by journalists for monitoring the ongoing presidential race: prediction markets. 

With prediction markets, anyone can bet on the outcome of future real-world events – whether it be results from a football game, the public announcement that alien life exists or the wedding venue for celebrities Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. But, they also touch on more serious events, like the outcome of an election cycle.

And these predictions mean big business. According to Pew Research Center analysis, the trading volume on these platforms has risen from less than $5 billion in September 2025 to about $24 billion in April 2026. 

Now, even traditional media—at least in the U.S.—have started forming partnerships with prediction market platforms. CNN, for example, signed a partnership with the platform Kalshi and displays its real-time probabilities in broadcasts.

In Brazil, some media outlets are using prediction markets as sources in reporting on the race for president, putting them on equal footing with traditional opinion polls.

But, not everyone is enthusiastic. Some experts are urging caution and transparency.

“The problem is that these aren’t polls,” Brazilian technology anthropologist David Nemer, a professor at the University of Virginia, told the LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “They reflect the behavior of those willing to put money on the line, not necessarily the opinion of the Brazilian electorate. Furthermore, these markets can be influenced by big bettors, coordinated campaigns and even actors interested in shaping specific perceptions of the election.”

Globally, as mounting evidence of insider trading emerges and influencers sponsored by these companies seem to be sowing doubt about the electoral process, there is genuine concern about how these platforms might be used for political purposes. Countries like Portugal, Germany, Australia, Ireland and Malta have expressed concern over the growth of prediction markets amid their own political races.  

Since April 26, prediction market platforms have been in regulatory limbo in Brazil, officially prohibited from offering and trading any bets related to entertainment, political or sports events. Ricardo Morishita, the National Consumer Secretary at the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, said that unauthorized platforms do not offer minimum guarantees and expose users to high risks.

Despite the ruling, both the Kalshi and Polymarket platforms still maintain active online forecasts regarding the Brazilian election, highlighting the difficulty of regulating companies that are not based in the country.

Some media outlets have continued to use the prediction platforms as a point of interest. Both Poder360 and Valor Investe explained the legal uncertainty facing the companies in Brazil, yet they still published the latest updates on the election race based on prediction markets. 

Even well-known television journalists, such as Guga Chacra—who has 1.5 million followers—posted about the topic on X, using the results from Polymarket betting page on the 2026 Brazilian electoral race.

When questioned, Guilherme Alpendre, chief operations officer at Poder360, told LJR that they adopt an open editorial policy regarding the use of predictive market platforms as a journalistic source. 

“These platforms produce data that reflect the collective perception of thousands of people about future events. This information has news value for readers interested in the political landscape,” Alpendre said. “Poder’s role in journalism, when reporting this data, is the same as always: to inform what exists and what is being said, leaving the analysis and conclusions to the reader.”

What’s in a prediction?

Neale El-Dash—who holds a PhD in Statistics from the University of São Paulo—explained that, despite appearing similar, the nature of polling and prediction markets is very different.

“Who I think will win is one thing. The candidate I will vote for is another,” he told LJR. For El-Dash, founder of an election poll aggregator site PollingData, the most relevant issue here is the sample.

“When we conduct a public opinion poll or an election poll, we select a sample, that is, a subgroup of the population, and only that subgroup of the population can participate in the survey. We select those people in a way that, so to speak, allows them to represent the population. In the case of the betting market, anyone can go there and place how many bets they want, so there is no control,” El-Dash said.

The statistician gave the following example to illustrate the difference: He explained that, in a betting market, a person can place as many bets as they wish; thus, those with more money will place more bets and exert even greater influence on the results.

“Thinking about soccer, it's as if we held an election to determine which team is the most popular and allowed the same person to vote multiple times. What would happen? The guy who's a bigger fan, would vote for [his team] over and over again. So you end up with a survey of which teams the most fanatical soccer fans support, not which teams the population supports. That could completely distort the result,” he said.

Nemer said this is at the heart of his concern that the media may use these markets not as a complementary indicator, but as a measure of voting intention. 

“It stops merely reflecting expectations and also begins to shape them. In other words, the bet becomes a tool of political influence,” he told LJR.

Ethical implications for journalists

All of this creates an ethical gray area that is difficult for journalists to navigate. 

Rogério Christofoletti, an ethics professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, told LJR that he views the media's use of prediction markets as “informal polls” with great concern.

“In journalism, the golden rule should be transparency. Articles need to make it very clear when they are dealing with datasets derived from betting, statistical projections or public opinion polls. Treating such data in the same way contributes to misleading the public; it manipulates the landscape, thereby affecting people's perception of reality. This is both a technical and an ethical issue,” he said.

Christofolleti explains that the technical problem is that these materials are not comparable, and the ethical problem is that this contributes to the distortion of news coverage during a period as sensitive as the current one.