Trump sues Des Moines Register, Selzer after wildly inaccurate final pre-election poll

President-elect Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and renowned pollster J. Ann Selzer for alleged "brazen election interference" on account of a poll that proved to be wildly out of step with the Iowa electorate.

Just a few days before the November 5 election, Selzer released a poll indicating that Vice President Kamala Harris enjoyed a three-point lead over Trump in Iowa. The poll then sent shock waves across the mainstream media, as all other polls showed Trump with a comfortable lead in the state and Selzer had long been considered a reliable pollster.

'Defendants and their cohorts in the Democrat Party hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris.'

By election night, the excitement Selzer's poll stirred in Democrats and their allies in the media had turned to disappointment after Trump easily carried Iowa by more than 13 points. Furthermore, Trump also carried all seven swing states en route to a landslide electoral and popular vote victory.

With inauguration just a few weeks away and a recent $15 million defamation settlement with ABC News over apparently defamatory statements from anchor George Stephanopoulos, Trump is now looking to hold the Register as well as parent company Gannett, Selzer, and her polling firm accountable for the poll, filing a lawsuit that accuses the defendants of violating the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.

"Defendants and their cohorts in the Democrat Party hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election," the lawsuit said, according to CNN. "Instead, the November 5 Election was a monumental victory for President Trump in both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote, an overwhelming mandate for his America First principles, and the consignment of the radical socialist agenda to the dustbin of history."

"The Harris Poll was no 'miss' but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election," it added.

At a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, Trump mentioned the lawsuit. "I'm going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster, who got it right all the time, and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points," Trump explained.

"I'm not doing this because I want to. I'm doing this because I feel l have an obligation to."

Rich Baris, dubbed the "most accurate national pollster of 2024," seemed to support the lawsuit. "I'd testify for free. FREE," he tweeted in response to news about it.

In a recent discussion on Iowa PBS, Selzer denied that she "intentionally set up to deliver" an erroneous poll. "I've never done that," she continued, adding that there is not "a single shred of evidence" that she coordinated with anyone or received payment from anyone to rig the poll in Harris' favor.

Selzer did not respond to CNN's request for comment.

In response to a request for comment, the Des Moines Register referred Blaze News to Gannett. Gannett then provided the following statement to Blaze News, attributing it to Register spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton:

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. We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit.

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