Trump sues Iowa pollster over prediction he'd lose to Harris

Brian Niemietz, New York Daily News on Dec 17, 2024

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President-elect Donald Trump is suing prominent Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the newspaper she works for over an unfavorable poll published near Election Day that predicted he’d lose the Hawkeye State to Kamala Harris.

“Contrary to reality and defying credulity, Defendants’ (Kamala) Harris Poll was published three days before Election Day and purported to show Harris leading President Trump in Iowa by three points,” reads the suit filed Tuesday in Polk County, Iowa. “President Trump ultimately won Iowa by over 13 points.”

Trump’s suit also targets the Des Moines Register and the paper’s parent company Gannett Co., Inc.

The president-elect’s lawyers claim the inaccurate poll violates the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act pertaining to consumer deception.

“The Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump’s suit charges.

The 78-year-old Republican leader told reporters at a Monday press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate that he felt “an obligation” to legally challenge Selzer’s poll. His suit argues political campaigns feel compelled to divert resources to places where they might not be needed when polling suggests deficiencies in certain areas.

Seltzer, who founded the Iowa-based polling firm Selzer & Company and had worked with the Des Moines Register since 1987, said the 2024 election would be the last one in which her research would appear in the paper. She told a local PBS station in December that trying to figure out where the statistics went wrong “does sort of awaken me in the middle of the night,” but she remained stumped by the discrepancy.

“The allegations, I take very seriously,” she said. “To suggest without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with somebody, I was being paid by somebody… it’s hard to pay too much attention to it except that they’re accusing me of a crime.”

Trump’s case against Seltzer is a civil suit. She’s been charged with no crimes.

In a statement to the Daily News, the Des Moines Register acknowledged its poll didn’t accurately reflect the results of the election and has released information providing transparency into its methodology.

“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit,” a spokesperson said.

Trump campaigned on being tough with media outlets whose reporting he didn’t like. ABC News settled a $15 million defamation suit with the president-elect Monday after he took issue with anchorman George Stephanopoulos claiming he’d been found “liable of rape.”

Trump was ruled liable in 2023 for sexually abusing and defaming advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996. He refutes that ruling.

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