President-elect Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Des Moines Register and renowned pollster J. Ann Selzer, accusing them of “blatant election interference.” The legal action stems from Selzer’s poll published just three days before the 2024 election, which inaccurately predicted that Vice President Kamala Harris would defeat her Republican challenger in Iowa by a wide margin.
Trump’s attorneys filed the lawsuit in Polk County, Iowa, seeking damages. They argue that Selzer and the Des Moines Register interfered with the election process by releasing a “leaked and manipulated” poll that favored the Democratic candidate.
The November 2 poll indicated that Trump, 78, was trailing Harris, 60, by three percentage points, with Harris at 47% and Trump at 44%. This led many analysts and politicians to assume that Harris would have a commanding victory in the 2024 election, especially considering that Iowa had supported Trump by almost 10 percentage points in 2016 and around eight points in 2020.
“President Trump ultimately won Iowa by over thirteen points,” the lawsuit proudly states, highlighting a significant 16-point discrepancy from Selzer’s pre-election projection.
The lawsuit also claims that Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and other political figures leaked the flawed poll results just hours before the official release. Trump’s legal team contends that this was done “for maximum ‘shock and awe’ political impact rather than accuracy or reliability” in an effort to “cause as much damage to the electoral process as possible.”
Media outlets also jumped on the narrative of Harris pulling ahead in the polls, with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow hailing Selzer as a “living bull’s-eye” for her accurate predictions. However, just two weeks later, Selzer announced her retirement from polling.
“Selzer’s polling ‘miss’ was not an astonishing coincidence — it was intentional,” the lawsuit argues. “As President Trump observed: ‘She knew exactly what she was doing.’”
The suit further claims that the legal action is necessary to prevent “Defendants and their fellow radicals from continuing to act with corrupt intent in releasing polls manufactured for the purpose of skewing election results in favor of Democrats.” It also criticizes Harris for her “fatal weaknesses as a candidate,” her “lack of appeal to critical swaths of the traditional Democrat base,” and her “incessant use of ‘word salads.’”
In addition to Selzer, the lawsuit targets her polling firm, Selzer & Company, and Gannett, the parent company of the Des Moines Register, for allegedly violating the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act with the misleading poll. The lawsuit, first reported by Fox News, asserts that the poll misled “millions of Americans, including Plaintiff, residents of Iowa, and Iowans who contributed to President Trump’s Campaign and its affiliated entities (the ‘Trump 2024 Campaign’).”
The filing also references previous instances where Selzer’s polls were said to have favored other Democratic candidates. One example is a poll from the 2022 Iowa attorney general race, which incorrectly showed incumbent Tom Miller leading GOP candidate Brenna Bird by 18 percentage points. Bird ultimately won the race with 50.9% of the vote compared to Miller’s 49.1%.
This lawsuit follows Trump’s announcement at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence the previous day that he would be taking legal action against the Des Moines Register and Selzer.
It also comes on the heels of a defamation settlement between Trump and ABC News, which concluded over the weekend. The settlement required the network to pay $15 million to a “presidential foundation and museum” that Trump plans to establish.
“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,” stated Des Moines Register spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton. “We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit.”
{Matzav.com}