President-elect Donald Trump has recently announced that he is suing pollster Ann Selzer, alleging ‘fraud’ and ‘election interference’, in his words. Seltzer and her company, in partnership with The Des Moines Register, released a poll on the weekend before the election showing Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of President Trump by three points in the state of Iowa. President Trump ended up winning by 13.2, meaning Selzer missed by a whopping 16 points, over four times the stated margin of error.

President Trump carried the Hawkeye State by nine points in 2016 and by eight points in 2020, so it was never considered a state in contention in the 2024 election. Prior to that, President Obama carried Iowa twice.

So, a pollster missed really badly this time—what makes it so significant that it is still in the news, over a month after the election?

In fact, amazingly, Selzer’s was not even the least accurate state poll in the 2024 cycle. That ‘title’ goes to a poll by Dartmouth College, which put Harris up by 28 points (!) in the state of New Hampshire, which she ended up winning by 2.8. So, Dartmouth overestimated her victory ten-fold, a 25.2-point miss. However, what they have going for them over Selzer is that at least they called the winner right…

What made the Selzer poll such a big story was its prior reputation Selzer had built up in the state. She got the final margin right within two points in the last three presidential elections, got the winner correct every time since 2008, and correctly called numerous other state-wide races in the state as well.

‘President Trump ended up winning Iowa by 13.2, meaning Selzer missed by a whopping 16 points, over four times the stated margin of error’

The impact of that poll should not be understated. Multiple leftist online content creators focusing on election analysis changed their projections solely based on that poll; and it also triggered a shift in betting odds in favour of Harris. The odds reverted back to showing President Trump as the clear favourite by election day, but left-wing pundits of varying size and influence held out hope for its accuracy even as results started to be reported.

And this is where Selzer’s behaviour gets a little unusual for a pollster. On the same day her final Iowa survey came, she went on liberal-progressive pundit Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC.

By that time, a whole slew of people had pointed out many facts that did not line up with Selzer’s final numbers. In early voting, registered Republicans were doing 18.6 points better in Iowa than they did in 2022, when they won the governor’s race by 19 points and the Senate race by 12. Furthermore, her explanation that female voters and concerns over abortion gave Harris the lead did not make too much sense either, given that those factors did not affect Iowa elections during the 2022 midterms, when they did in many other states, due to the recent overturning of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court at the time.

Yet Selzer did not address any of these very reasonable objections on national television. She later appeared as a guest on The Bulwark Podcast, evidently another left-wing show, with still no explanations for the glaring issues with her findings. She did take time, however, to note that her nickname is ‘the Outlier Queen’…

She also criticized the new method pollsters started to apply in the 2024 election, the so-called ‘recall vote’, when they also ask respondents whom they had voted for in the previous election, and weight their numbers according to those results. Needless to say, polls conducted with that method ended up being nowhere near as inaccurate as what Her Rotundity herself, the Outlier Queen put out.

There are further possible ethical issues with the poll. A Twitter user by the handle @IllinoisLib posted ‘Selzer is about to drop Kamala +3’ about 45 minutes before the actual release. When asked where they got that information, they had said that it was Illinois Governor JB Pritzker who mentioned it at a Duke University Democrats meeting. Only a few weeks earlier one of the few right-leaning pollsters in the industry, Rassmussen Reports, received a considerable amount of scrutiny for sharing their numbers with the Trump campaign prior to the public release, which resulted in them being excluded from the 538 aggregate.

Was Ann Selzer Paid Off for Her Final Poll?

Shortly after the election, in the face of the backlash, Selzer announced her retirement from polling. This prompted many online to speculate that she had manipulated her numbers to favour the Democrats for a bribe large enough to assure her a comfortable retirement.

In a recent interview with the Iowa Press, she claimed that she had decided to retire even before the release of her 2024 poll. However, she had made no public statements suggesting that in her media interviews.

Still, there is no evidence of any such payment to Selzer by any Democratic operative. What exactly went down with the last Selzer Iowa poll ever published, and if there was in fact any wrongdoing, will likely be found out in a long and costly civil suit—which is not a good position to be in for Selzer regardless of the outcome.

But then again, that is why you want to try to avoid putting out polls that miss by 16 points…

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