The Taipei mayoral race has produced a rare signal in which polls and the prediction market point in opposite directions — an unexpected boost for the Chiang Wan-an camp and a warning sign for the Shen Po-yang camp.

• Two recent polls both show the DPP's Shen Po-yang leading the KMT's Chiang Wan-an by a wide margin, with gaps ranging from 3 to 17 percentage points.
• At the same time, however, Chiang Wan-an's odds of winning on the overseas prediction market Polymarket have risen for three straight days, hitting a recent high — moving in the exact opposite direction from the polls.
• The analysis rules out "whale manipulation": large traders are actually mostly betting that Chiang will lose, while it is a large volume of small bets from retail traders that has actually driven the price up.
• The market's favoring of Chiang may reflect traders placing more weight on structural factors such as "the KMT's home-turf advantage in Taipei" and "the incumbent's advantage in seeking re-election" rather than on any single poll number; it could also stem from overseas traders having insufficient information about the Taiwanese race.
• One of the polls had already been questioned over its political leanings by the opposition camp before it was released, and with 10 to 20 percent of voters still undecided, this instance of "polls versus market" is further clouded by uncertainty.

Outlook: As polling day approaches, if subsequent polls continue to consistently favor Shen Po-yang, the gap between the market and the polls may narrow — but if the market keeps rising, it will become an important signal of a resurgence in Chiang Wan-an's campaign.