Approval ratings measure how popular a president is. Prediction markets measure something different: what people actually think is going to happen.
Right now, on Polymarket, those two readings are pointing in opposite directions, and the gap between them is the whole story.
The contract asking whether Donald Trump leaves the presidency before December 31, 2026, is priced at 9%: near the lowest point it has reached since opening last November. That means traders put a 91% probability on Trump completing this stretch of his term.
Why Polls and Prediction Markets Tell a Different Story
If contract pricing were dictated by raw popularity, the market would look completely different. National polling aggregates show Trump’s net approval rating has cratered to -17.8.
To put that in perspective, that sits below Joe Biden's historical lows at the exact same milestone in his term (-16.5) and significantly trails Trump’s own first-term benchmark of -11.3.
The legal headlines from Monday morning painted an equally chaotic picture. Trump got a big win, but some loses as well.
In a swift double-blow, the Supreme Court rejected Trump's attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and declined to hear his appeal in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, leaving a $5 million civil judgment fully intact.
Coverage of those developments has been extensive. Yet over the same period, Polymarket odds have moved in one direction: down.
The explanation seems to be structural. Prediction markets don't respond to how a president is perceived: they price specific outcomes. A low approval rating means Trump might be unpopular. It does not create any legal or institutional path to remove him.
Traders are answering a narrower question: will Trump actually leave office before 2027? And the architecture of the United States politics makes the answer almost certainly no.
What Would Need to Happen for This Market to Shift
For this contract to resolve "Yes," one of three things would have to occur:
- Trump resigns.
- He is impeached and convicted.
- The 25th Amendment is invoked and upheld by two-thirds of both houses of Congress.
None of those scenarios looks imminent.
The impeachment route, in particular, has become incredibly difficult to envision.
In May, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, one of the seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 trial, failed to even qualify for his state's primary runoff. He was knocked out completely after a brutal third-place finish behind a Trump-endorsed challenger.
On the same day the court ruled against Trump on the Fed and Carroll, it also handed him a sweeping expansion of presidential authority over independent agencies. The institutional ground under his presidency is, on balance, more stable than the headlines suggest.
The 9% still on the board exists because markets never price out what they cannot fully exclude, like a development that hasn't surfaced yet. But as a working probability, it reflects the distance between turbulent coverage and actual removal.
