Trump sues Des Moines Register over Iowa Poll that predicted ...

Published December 17, 2024 at 2:44 PM CST

President-elect Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register over its poll released just days before the election that inaccurately predicted his opponent would win Iowa.

The closely-watched poll, published by the Des Moines Register Nov. 2, showed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris leading Republican Trump by three points. Trump went on to win Iowa by 13 points three days later.

The lawsuit alleges the Register and Selzer violated Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act by using the poll for "brazen election interference."

Trump announced the lawsuit during a press conference at Mar-A-Lago Monday, and filed it in Polk County that evening, naming Selzer, her company Selzer & Co., the Register and its parent company, Gannett, as defendants.

"I'm doing this because I feel I have an obligation to. I'm going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time," Trump said. "And then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points, and it became the biggest story all over the world."

Trump has filed a number of lawsuits against news outlets and journalists. ABC News just agreed to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation suit he brought over remarks made by its anchor George Stephanopoulous. Trump is suing CBS over a 60 Minutes episode featuring Vice President Kamala Harris. He's suing famed Watergate journalist Bob Woodward, and even the board of the Pulitzer Prizes, which had reaffirmed the honors it had bestowed on news reports over Russian election interference.

In the wake of the election, the Des Moines Register and Selzer said they are reviewing the polls results to find out why it was so far off.

Des Moines Register Executive Editor Carol Hunter wrote in an editorial published two days after the election that Register editors were planning to work with Selzer on a thorough review of "all methodologies and other factors that may have impacted the difference."

In a statement released Tuesday morning, Des Moines Register spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton said the newspaper stands by the poll.

"We have acknowledged that the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer. We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit," she said.

On election night, Iowa Republicans attacked the Register and Selzer for the poll results, saying it helped motivate more Republicans to vote.

At a GOP watch party in Des Moines, Iowa Republican Party Chair Jeff Kauffman called for Republicans to cancel their Register subscriptions.

“You know what happened after we saw the Selzer poll and the Des Moines Register’s sham of a poll? We got even more excited. Donald Trump won!” he said.

Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks held up a copy of the Register with the poll during her election night watch party at the Riverside Casino and told her supporters she thanked Selzer "for motivating District 1 to come out and vote for Miller-Meeks for a third term."

Chris Larimer, a professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa, said the lawsuit has the potential to further polarize the electorate.

"The concern potentially is what this does just to polling generally," Larimer said. "I mean, there was already skepticism about polling coming into the election, following the election and, you know, it probably just adds to that."

Larimer said there is nothing to suggest the poll's methodology was flawed or that Selzer conducted it in a different way that any of her other polls.

"There are always polls that I think candidates are going to be frustrated by, but it'd be hard to see how this lawsuit goes forward," he said.

Selzer announced her retirement two weeks after the election. A former Register staff member, she founded her own polling company, Selzer & Co., in 1997, doing polling for the newspaper on a contract basis.

Her polls were highly respected, earning an A+ rating from Nate Silver's "Silver Bulletin" pollster ratings in June.

They accurately predicted five out of six presidential elections prior to the 2024 election. It inaccurately predicted Democrat John Kerry was ahead of Republican incumbent George Bush in the 2004 presidential election. However, that same year her poll accurately predicted the order of the Democratic candidates in the Iowa caucuses. Her poll also predicted then-newcomer presidential candidate Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 Democratic caucuses.

Selzer told Ben Kieffer on IPR's River to River last month that the Nov. 2 poll was not the reason for her retirement, calling it a "spectacular miss" and saying she had not made any changes to her methodology when conducting the poll.

"I didn't make any assumptions about whether there were going to be more of this kind of voter, fewer of this kind of voter," she said. "I do my best to have my data reveal the future to me."

She said she was still reviewing the results of the poll and said she had yet to provide a "satisfying answer" on why it was so far off.