patrick.net

According to a DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners survey of over 1,000 registered voters, Trump's popularity has actually increased four percentage points, from 49% to 53%. It's up 13 points since March 7 among those 18-29.

Astonishingly, Trump's approval jumped six points among Democrats and independents as well.

While the poll was conducted from March 31 to April 3, you'd have to live in a cave not to have been exposed to the rabid opposition to Trump's tariff plan. Even if the specifics weren't known, the American people knew the general outline of Trump's plans.

What Americans knew about the president's tariff plans, a plurality approved of them.

Polymarket played a headline-grabbing role in the 2024 election, particularly during the Democratic primary crisis. As legacy media and major pollsters insisted Vice President Kamala Harris remained the frontrunner, Polymarket users weren’t buying it. Literally. Long before official forecasts began to shift, the platform’s odds reflected a steep and persistent collapse in confidence in Harris’s chances, especially in key swing states.

The tipping point came in late summer, when Polymarket’s crowd-priced contracts gave Harris less than a 10% chance of securing the election— even as CNN still had her leading the race. Media dismissed it as internet trolling or crypto noise. But in the end, the prediction proved eerily accurate: Harris was out, and the DNC was scrambled.

In reality, Polymarket’s crowdsourced “hive mind” outperformed the pundits and pollsters. It didn’t just reflect public sentiment— it correctly forecast it. That made it political and thus, intensely controversial. ...

In 2024, after it became painfully obvious that Polymarket bettors weren’t buying the official pro-Harris narrative, Biden’s weaponized DOJ joined the fray. Of course. FBI agents raided CEO Shayne Coplan’s New York apartment, seizing his devices in a grossly political shot across the bow. Despite no evidence of harm, fraud, or user complaints, the Biden administration treated the site as a national security threat —election interference!— because it allowed ordinary people to bet against elite narratives.

The investigation has dragged on for nearly a year, casting a chill over decentralized prediction markets.

Yesterday, two major Polymarket probes —one civil (CFTC), one criminal (DOJ)— were both unceremoniously dropped. No charges. No settlement. Just poof. This came after FBI agents spent nearly a year sniffing around the site’s U.S. userbase and “unregistered prediction markets.”




... This could turn the grotesque polling industry inside out. Polymarket and its kin don’t just compete with the polling industry; they threaten to obsolete it. While polls rely on outdated phone surveys, small samples, statistical manipulation, and partisan question framing, betting markets are superior in every way. They tap the collective intelligence of thousands of people with real skin in the game in real time. They don’t ask what anyone says will happen— they watch what we’re willing to bet our money on.

Crowds produce vastly better results than polls. In 2024, the crowd accurately predicted Kamala Harris’s downfall long before the pollsters ever admitted she was even in trouble.

If they make this category, I’ll bet it’s the end of the long-running polling scam. Goodbye, pollster manipulators. We won’t miss you.

Patrick says

The most likely outcome is dismissal.

I am pre-calling it on the predictions thread!



There is only two ways this judge problem can be fixed:

Another Judiciary Act (all judges fired, new ones hired)

-- OR --

The Law Abiding Citizen Option