J. Ann Selzer, the pollster behind the shock voter survey which wrongly predicted that Iowa would turn blue in the 2024 election, is speaking out about the attacks she has faced over the wrong forecast.
The outlier poll sponsored by the Des Moines Register had raised eyebrows when it was published in early November because it showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading now-President-elect Donald Trump by three percentage points in a state that was considered safe for Republicans. Trump ended up winning the state by over 13 percentage points.
In an interview with PBS’s “Iowa Press” broadcast on Friday, Selzer struck down any suggestion by her detractors that she had somehow manipulated the data.
“I’m mystified about what the motivation anybody thinks I had and would act on in such a public poll. I don’t understand it,” she said.
Still, Selzer said she takes the allegations against her “very seriously.”
“They’re saying that this was election interference, which is a crime,” she said.
Selzer added that those critical of her work are falsely suggesting “without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with somebody, I was being paid by somebody” to deliver a specific finding.
“It’s hard to pay too much attention to it except that they’re accusing me of a crime,” she said.
Trump, who comfortably won the 2024 presidential election, was one of Selzer’s most prominent critics, accusing both her and the Register of committing “possible ELECTION FRAUD” over the poll, which he described as “totally Fake” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Prior to this latest poll, Selzer’s track record in The Hawkeye State was nearly spotless, with only a miss in the 2018 gubernatorial contest. For instance, she nailed the final results of the 2016 and 2020 presidential races in the state and the margin of President Barack Obama’s victory in Iowa in 2012.
During her appearance on “Iowa Press,” Selzer was also asked if she has identified the reasons why her methodology didn’t serve her well in this race despite her past successes.
“I wish I knew the answer to that, but like I said, there wasn’t anything we saw that needed to be fixed,” she said. “The reality is that more people supporting Donald Trump turned out. I’m eagerly awaiting the [Iowa] Secretary of State’s turnout report that will happen in January.”
Nearly two weeks after the election, Selzer announced she is ending her polling career to take on new opportunities. In a column published in the Des Moines Register explaining the decision, Selzer noted that she had already planned to part ways with the outlet way ahead of the election polling results.
“Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results?” she wrote. “Of course. It’s ironic that it’s just the opposite.”
