Polymarket Global Elections Trader

Trades Polymarket prediction markets on elections, referendums, and democratic events worldwide. Exploits two structural edges — electoral system type predictability (FPTP amplification vs PR majority impossibility) and regional information lag (non-English polling aggregators update daily; Polymarket prices don't).

Global Elections & Democracy Trader

This is a template. The default signal is keyword-based market discovery combined with conviction-based sizing and election_bias() — remix it with the data sources listed below. The skill handles all the plumbing (market discovery, trade execution, safeguards). Your agent provides the alpha.

Strategy Overview

Global election markets on Polymarket have two layered structural edges that compound cleanly without any external API:

1. Electoral system type — Polymarket retail trades all elections as if they were US presidential races. They aren't. FPTP systems amplify poll leads into landslides; proportional representation systems make outright majorities near-impossible. Retail systematically misprices both.

2. Regional information lag — Polymarket is US-English-speaking. Wahlrecht.de updates German polling daily. DataFolha updates Brazilian tracking daily. Neither is read by the average Polymarket trader. The lag between a 3-point swing in a non-English aggregator and Polymarket repricing is 12–48 hours.

Signal Logic

Default Signal: Conviction-Based Sizing with Election Bias

1. Discover active election and referendum markets on Polymarket
2. Compute base conviction from distance to threshold (0% at boundary → 100% at p=0/p=1)
3. Apply election_bias() — combines electoral system type with regional information lag
4. Size = max(MIN_TRADE, conviction × bias × MAX_POSITION) — capped at MAX_POSITION
5. Skip markets with spread > MAX_SPREAD or fewer than MIN_DAYS to resolution

Election Bias (built-in, no API required)

Factor 1 — Electoral System Type

System / question type	Multiplier	The structural reality
FPTP "will X win" (UK, Australia, Canada)	1.20x	A 5% poll lead → ~80-85% win probability; retail anchors to raw margin, not seat translation
Runoff / second round	1.15x	Post-round-1 head-to-head polling has <3% average error; retail treats it like first round
Referendum (binary yes/no)	1.10x	Clean resolution criteria, well-polled in democracies
Snap election / early dissolution	0.85x	No steady polling baseline — volatility dominates
Coalition formation / who governs	0.80x	Multi-party negotiation dynamics genuinely unpredictable from polls alone
No-confidence / leadership challenge	0.80x	Parliamentary arithmetic + defection timing — hard to model
PR system "will X win outright majority"	0.70x	Near-impossible in Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Israel — retail massively overprices

The PR Majority Rule — In proportional representation systems, a single party winning an outright majority is a statistical anomaly, not a plausible baseline. Germany's Bundestag, Sweden's Riksdag, Israel's Knesset, the Netherlands' Tweede Kamer — single-party majorities happen perhaps once per generation. Yet retail prices these markets at 15–30% because they project the US two-party binary onto a multi-party system. Every such market is a structural NO unless one party is polling above 45%, which essentially never happens in mature PR democracies.

Factor 2 — Regional Information Lag

Region	Multiplier	Key data sources retail doesn't read
Germany / France / Benelux / Scandinavia	1.20x	Wahlrecht.de (daily), Politico Europe, Votecompass — 12-36h lag vs Polymarket
Brazil / Latin America	1.15x	DataFolha, Quaest (daily tracking in Portuguese); CIEP, CNC for other countries
South / Southeast Asia	1.15x	India: CSDS, ABP-CVoter; Indonesia: LSI/Indikator; Philippines: Pulse Asia — local exit polls hours ahead of English
UK / Australia / Canada	1.05x	English but underweighted vs US — Electoral Calculus MRP models give structural edge
Sub-Saharan Africa / fragile democracies	0.75x	Low polling quality, coup risk, result disputes — resolution risk is material

Combined Examples

Market	System mult	Region mult	Final bias
"Will SPD win majority in Bundestag?"	0.70x (PR majority)	1.20x (Germany lag)	0.84x — skeptical
"Will CDU win German general election?"	1.20x (FPTP-style win)	1.20x (Germany lag)	1.35x cap
"Who wins Brazil runoff?"	1.15x (runoff)	1.15x (Latin America)	1.32x
"Will UK Labour win majority?"	1.20x (FPTP)	1.05x (English)	1.26x
"Will snap election be called?"	0.85x (snap)	1.0x	0.85x
"Will Nigerian election resolve cleanly?"	1.0x	0.75x (Africa)	0.75x

Keywords Monitored

election, referendum, vote, prime minister, chancellor, president,
Germany election, France election, Brazil election, India election,
UK election, Japan election, South Korea, Taiwan election, snap election,
coalition, majority, parliament, polling, exit poll, incumbent, runoff,
second round, Bundestag, Riksdag, Assemblée, Duma, Diet, Congress,
Lok Sabha, confidence vote, no confidence, hung parliament,
minority government, proportional representation, first past the post

Remix Signal Ideas

• Wahlrecht.de: German polling aggregator updated daily — compare to Polymarket for German election markets; the lag is often >24h and actionable
• Politico Europe Poll of Polls: Aggregated EU-wide polling — covers France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland simultaneously
• DataFolha / Quaest: Brazilian tracking polls in Portuguese — daily updates on presidential and state races
• Electoral Calculus MRP (UK): Constituency-level seat projections — translates raw polling to seat counts, far more predictive than national vote share alone

Safety & Execution Mode

The skill defaults to paper trading (venue="sim"). Real trades only with --live flag.

Scenario	Mode	Financial risk
python trader.py	Paper (sim)	None
Cron / automaton	Paper (sim)	None
python trader.py --live	Live (polymarket)	Real USDC

autostart: false and cron: null — nothing runs automatically until you configure it in Simmer UI.

Required Credentials

Variable	Required	Notes
SIMMER_API_KEY	Yes	Trading authority. Treat as high-value credential.

Tunables (Risk Parameters)

All declared as tunables in clawhub.json and adjustable from the Simmer UI.

Variable	Default	Purpose
SIMMER_MAX_POSITION	30	Max USDC per trade (reached at 100% conviction)
SIMMER_MIN_VOLUME	10000	Min market volume filter (USD) — elections need liquidity
SIMMER_MAX_SPREAD	0.08	Max bid-ask spread (8%)
SIMMER_MIN_DAYS	5	Min days until resolution
SIMMER_MAX_POSITIONS	8	Max concurrent open positions
SIMMER_YES_THRESHOLD	0.38	Buy YES if market price ≤ this value
SIMMER_NO_THRESHOLD	0.62	Sell NO if market price ≥ this value
SIMMER_MIN_TRADE	5	Floor for any trade (min USDC regardless of conviction)

Dependency

simmer-sdk by Simmer Markets (SpartanLabsXyz)

• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/simmer-sdk/
• GitHub: https://github.com/SpartanLabsXyz/simmer-sdk