While the latest polls suggest the presidential election is close, some social media ads paint a very different picture.

In some ads for the online gambling platform Polymarket, graphs illustrate former President Donald Trump’s lead as “up to 32% in odds” over Vice President Kamala Harris, claiming the service is “the most accurate way to track the election .”

However, what Polymarket doesn’t always disclose alongside the ads is that the percentages shown are actually odds shown based on bets placed with the service, not projections based on representative polls. More than half of the advertisements do not mention that the figures originate in forecast-based markets.

“The idea is that if people disagree with the market price, they have the opportunity to capitalize by buying the side they think is underpriced,” Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan explained in a post on social media.

“Don’t trust the polls, trust the markets,” some ads for the platform read.

Social media advertising has flooded platforms like Facebook, Instagram and X. On Meta alone, Polymarket put at least $50,000 into a 45-ad campaign promoting opportunity, according to data available in Facebook’s ad library.

One ad — viewed more than 900,000 times on Facebook and Instagram as of Oct. 28 — shows Trump winning in the Polymarket odds, according to the Meta Ad Library. Among the viewers, 20% are men between 45 and 54 years old and 12% are women in the same age category. The ad was seen most in California, New York and Texas, with 16%, 11% and 10% of viewers in these regions respectively.

Several others ask questions like “Did serving fries improve Trump’s chances?” or “Does Trump have all the charisma?” Of the 45 meta ads, many ads featured solo images of Trump, some featured side-by-side images of both candidates, and none featured solo images of Harris.

A separate sponsored campaign by right-wing social media personality Shaneyy Richh included nine ads promoting Polymarket’s predictions.

“The complete list of real conservatives polled by political pollsters,” read one ad, which depicted a man squinting at a small piece of paper. “Are you tired of biased polls? Find out what really happens in the 2024 race,” the caption read.

On X – a platform owned by one of Trump’s biggest supporters, Elon Musk – ads also promoted the predictions on the site’s search page.

Polymarket, which offers betting on sports, business, science, politics and more, reports that users have spent more than $2.7 billion placing bets on the next president. According to an X post, one user bet $2.2 million on a Harris win.

Based on user betting odds, Polymarket says Trump’s odds of winning on October 31 are about 65.5% and Harris’ odds of winning are 34.5%.

“Polymarket odds are derived from the market price of a contract that pays $1 if an event occurs and expires worthless if it does not,” reads a Polymarket blog post. “For example, someone paying 60 cents for a ‘yes’ contract from Trump implies a 60% chance of winning.”

Not everyone is quick to place bets or even trusts Polymarket’s system.

“Trump and right-wing influencers are presenting these polymarket opportunities like a poll,” Claudio Vallejo, an online creator, said via a TikTok video. “They are using these odds as proof or evidence that Trump is peaking at the right time and is so popular that he cannot possibly lose in November… They are laying the groundwork for ‘too big to rig.’”

A company spokesperson referred to a “misunderstanding” about the company and explained that the statistics are not polls, but probabilities calculated based on stocks traded on Polymarket. The odds are not intended to reflect public opinion, but rather reflect bettors’ confidence in a Trump victory or a Harris victory.

“A major point of confusion is that both vote share and odds are expressed as a percentage, but do not mean the same thing,” Polymarket wrote on its Substack page.

Coplan recently took to .

“Polymarkt is not about politics,” he wrote in a statement on X on October 25. ‘feeds, pundits and incongruous polls – we take that responsibility seriously… Hopefully politics is the first step in getting the masses to realize the value of market-based forecasting.’

Although the ads are popular in the United States, Polymarket’s terms and conditions prohibit US Persons, citizens or even temporary residents from participating in the betting.

Currently, Polymarket requires gamblers to accept terms and conditions confirming that they are “not a resident, national, or agent of the United States” or several other countries where the platform is regulated.

In 2022, Polymarket was fined $1.4 million by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which said it illegally hosted event betting in the US.

A federal appeals court recently overturned the CFTC’s decision to block Kalshi, an election betting company, from restricting “US Persons” from placing bets on their markets – but Polymarket was not part of that lawsuit and the law banning betting on Polymarket is still in effect. Kalshi’s statistics show a 59% and 41% split between Trump and Harris, respectively. The company has also used social media to promote election betting, spending more than $140,000 on meta ads, according to the company’s ad library.

While people in the US aren’t supposed to place their own bets, a Polymarket spokesperson explained why they think their platform could be useful to Americans. He said the company acts as a live information source, similar to the stock market.

The social media ads do not explicitly encourage people in the US to bet, but do not contain a disclaimer about the scheme.

Nevertheless, the site is gaining attention from many right-wing officials and celebrities, including Trump himself.

“We’re up quite a bit in the polls. They have a new phenomenon and that is a betting poll. They call it the poly poll or something I’ve never heard of,” Trump said at an Oct. 18 rally in Michigan, as a crowd member shouted “Polymarket” to correct him.

“Polymarket, and I think it’s 64 to 38, 36, something like that. So that’s not bad. I don’t know what it means, but it means we’re doing pretty well,” he added.

Although Polymarket called Trump’s reference to the company a “common mistake” in “confusing Polymarket odds with polls,” a paid ad shares the rally clip with the caption, “they call it the polly poll or something.”

The Instagram reel does not contain a similar clarification to the one in the blog post.

Musk also turned to X to share the predictions – then 67% and 33.1% for Trump and Harris respectively. In another message, Musk said Polymarket’s odds were “more accurate than polls.”

A Nov. 3 NBC News poll found Harris and Trump deadlocked among respondents, each with 49% support from registered voters. Every major poll from the past week shows a split between the two candidates ranging from 0 to 3 percentage points, with most of the differences falling within the margin of error.

Some experts warn to be cautious when analyzing both the polls and the markets.

“When people look at polls, at some point they expect real precision,” John Fortier, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on topics such as election demographics and voting, told NBC News last week. “It’s not that we can’t get good information … but if you really expect polls to tell you … what’s absolutely going to happen next Tuesday, then obviously there’s just a built-in margin of error.”

While Fortier notes that the financial risk associated with the markets can be seen as a “more serious” gesture than a response to a poll, he emphasizes “real doubts” and warns that “the details matter.”

“I only see potential for more market disruption,” he said. “I’m generally skeptical, and I’m even more skeptical about a market that is smaller but also excludes American citizens.”