President-elect Donald Trump is suing retired Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer over her pre-election survey that showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading in the state, calling it “brazen election interference.”
The shock poll, which drew national attention given Selzer’s record of success in Iowa, proved incorrect: Trump won the state by more than 13 points. But that has not stopped the president-elect from claiming the poll was intended to manipulate the results of the election.
“While Selzer is not the only pollster to engage in this corrupt practice, she had a huge platform and following and, thus, a significant and impactful opportunity to deceive voters,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also represents an escalation of Trump’s pledge to more aggressively pursue litigation against media he views as unfair to him. The case against Selzer comes just after Trump settled another media lawsuit with ABC News and its political anchor George Stephanopoulos for $15 million.
The lawsuit against Selzer was filed in Polk County, Iowa, under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. Trump’s lawyers argue that incorrect polls force Republicans to “divert campaign time and money to areas in which they are ahead” as well as “deceives the public into believing that Democrat candidates are performing better than they really are.”
Speaking to a local PBS station on Friday before the lawsuit had been filed, Selzer said she’s taking Trump’s allegations “very seriously,” but added that she’s “mystified about what motivation anybody thinks I had and would act on in such a public poll.”
“The idea that I intentionally set up to deliver this response, when I’ve never done that before … I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do it,” she said. “It’s not my ethic.”
Trump announced his plans to sue during his Mar-a-Lago press conference on Monday. “I’m not doing this because I want to. I’m doing this because I feel I have an obligation to,” he said.
Also named in Trump’s lawsuit is the Des Moines Register, which published Selzer’s poll, and its parent company, Gannett.
“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,” Des Moines Register spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton said in a statement. “We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit.”
When asked for comment, Gannett sent the Register’s statement. Selzer announced two weeks after the election that she would be retiring from election polling.
“Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course,” Selzer wrote in an op-ed for the Register, addressing her final poll. “It’s ironic that it’s just the opposite. ”
Trump’s lawsuit claims that Selzer’s poll was not just wrong, as many polls are, but instead was an “attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election.”
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
