Read election-market rules before comparing candidates
Learn how election markets define the event they pay on, the official source, the deadline and edge cases, so polls do not get confused with resolution rules.
In this guide
The event is not the title
A contract on an election may carry a country, year and candidate name, but the rulebook decides which event actually pays. 2 contracts on the same race can reference different events. One might ask whether a candidate wins the national popular vote. Another might ask whether the same candidate is officially certified as the winner. In a single-round system those often coincide. In systems with a runoff, parliamentary seat assignment, indirect election or appointment, they can drift apart. Read the rulebook first, not the polling average.
A prediction market is usually built as an event that contains one or more markets. A single event might group a winner market with a turnout market, a margin market or a regional market. Those child markets can carry different rules, deadlines and resolution sources. The parent event's title does not override each child's own text. Check each individual market's active, closed and accepting-orders flags instead of assuming the whole event trades and resolves the same way.
Rewrite the market question in plain terms
'Will candidate X win the election' can mean at least 5 different things: winning the national popular vote, winning the most seats, being formally certified by an official electoral body, winning a runoff after no first-round majority, or being appointed through a parliamentary or indirect process. Each event has its own data source, timing and failure mode. A poll of vote share does not resolve any of them by itself. It estimates a population parameter only if the sampling and turnout assumptions hold, and those assumptions should be disclosed.
Keep 2 layers apart. The first layer is information about the race: polls, turnout expectations, historical patterns. The second layer is the payout condition written into the contract. A candidate comparison table can be perfectly useful for the first layer while saying nothing about the second. If the market resolves on certified winner but the table ranks candidates by polling average, the table is not measuring the same thing the contract pays on.
Worked example: one hypothetical market, 6 checks
The example below is illustrative only. It is not an empirical study, a validated model, or a claim about any real election. It applies a short checklist to a hypothetical country with an official electoral commission, a national popular vote, and a separately certified winner. The market text says the resolution source is the commission's final certification, with a deadline expressed in local time.
Step 1: identify the office, country and cycle. Step 2: name the official source, ideally the electoral body's published certification. Step 3: note the deadline and timezone. A rule that says 'within 30 days' behaves differently from a fixed date at 23:59 local time, because recounts and legal challenges can land on either side of that line. Step 4: check whether disputes, recounts or postponements are addressed in the rule text. Step 5: check whether additional context, such as a turnout threshold or coalition condition, changes the payout. Step 6: confirm the individual market's own active and accepting-orders flags. If any of these are missing, treat the market as under-specified for your purpose, even when the title looks clear.
| Check | Illustrative input | Illustrative outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Office, country, cycle | President, Country A, 2026 cycle | Event identified |
| Official source | National electoral commission | Source matches rule text |
| Deadline and timezone | 30 days after election, local time | Cutoff defined |
| Disputes or postponement | Recount provision present | Edge case covered |
| Additional context | No turnout threshold | Payout condition simple |
| Market flags | Child market still accepting orders | Tradable at check time |
Compare contract families by event, not by preference
The table below compares contract families by the event they reference and the resolution source their rules generally name. It does not rank them. The right choice depends on which event you actually want to express and which source you can independently verify. Fee values, order-book depth and venue availability are left out because they vary by platform and date, so check the venue directly at the moment you act.
If your question is the formal outcome, look for a market whose rules name the official certification source. If your question is the aggregate vote, look for a market that explicitly says national popular vote and defines whether it counts initial returns or final certified totals. If your question is control of the chamber, look for a market that references seat assignment or the relevant parliamentary arithmetic. Blending those exposures in one position is a common source of confusion, because the same day can produce a vote lead and a seat loss.
| Contract family | Event referenced | Typical resolution source in rules | Conditional fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Certified winner | Formal certification as winner | Official electoral body | You want the formal outcome, not the raw vote count |
| National popular vote | Highest national vote share or count | Specified certified totals | You want the aggregate vote, not seat assignment |
| Seat control | Seat count or parliamentary majority | Legislative or electoral authority | You want control of the chamber, not the executive |
| Runoff winner | Second-round result | Runoff certification | You expect no first-round majority |
| Appointed or indirect outcome | Selection by assembly or appointment | Named institutional source | The office is not directly elected |
Polls inform the race, not the payout
A polling average is not a probability of victory. AAPOR's best-practice guidance stresses transparent methods, question wording, sampling, fieldwork dates, nonresponse and methodological disclosure. A vote-share estimate can help you understand the race. It does not tell you whether a candidate will be certified, win a runoff, or secure a parliamentary majority. Any scenario built from polls is an illustration unless it is validated against the actual electoral mechanics of that country and cycle.
The practical consequence: when a comparison table shows a precise poll column and a vague resolution column, the poll column cannot fill the gap. The contract pays on the resolution event, and the resolution event is defined only by the rule text.
Edge cases worth reading twice
Most binary election markets pay 1 to the winning side and 0 to the losing side. A rare unknown or 50-50 resolution can pay 0.50 to each side instead. That is a specific rule outcome, not a universal cancellation or refund. Which situations trigger it is written in the market's own text, and the title alone is not sufficient to work it out.
Resolution sources also differ. Ordinary prediction markets may be resolved through UMA, while some Up/Down markets use a Chainlink time-weighted average price, or TWAP, which averages the price over a window rather than reading it at a single instant. In that UP/DOWN design, using the same asset stream, UP wins if the final TWAP is greater than or equal to the start TWAP, otherwise DOWN wins. Different exchange candles can produce different TWAP values. Do not generalise that mechanism to every duration or every source; verify the actual rule text.
Your next move, and 2 common confusions
Before any comparison, open the individual market and copy 4 things into a note: event, source, deadline with timezone, and edge cases. Then confirm the child market is still accepting orders, because a live parent event does not guarantee a live child. With that note in hand, candidate comparison becomes meaningful. For wider context on race structure, start from the political-market hub. When the question is how a result formally gets confirmed, the resolution guide is the direct reference. When you are interpreting poll averages, the polling guide covers the assumptions. When you need to check whether a market can still be traded, use the market availability guide.
2 errors commonly cause confusion. First, treating a candidate comparison as a substitute for reading the rules; the comparison may describe the race while the contract pays on a different event. Second, assuming that re-publishing archived news updates the rules; it does not. The rulebook is the controlling text, and it should name the official source, the deadline, and the handling of disputes or postponement before you size anything.
Sources & verification
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