This is a very nice early paragraph in this article. Makes me want to read more of what the person has to say.
My broader project is to understand how we preserve liberty in an increasingly algorithmic world. Prediction markets are a fascinating case where individuals, freely pursuing their own incentives and acting on their own information, can generate a public good for the digital era: a clearer shared picture of a highly complex political environment. At the same time, they can also create strange feedback loops that require careful governance. So they’re well worth studying.
Also, I had no idea how extensive betting on elections was in the past:
In a fascinating study, Rhode and Strumpf showed just how extensive the political betting markets of the late 19th and early 20th century were. As the graph from their data shows, betting volumes were generally high, exceeding $50m a number of times and peaking at nearly $300 million (in 2025 dollars) during the 1916 election.
It's a long article, but a pretty nice survey of prediction markets especially as they relate to elections.