President-elect Donald Trump revealed plans on Monday to sue the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer following the release of a pre-election survey that showed VP Kamala Harris leading in Iowa ahead of the election.
The contentious Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll, conducted by Selzer’s firm and published on November 2, indicated that Harris held a narrow 47% to 44% lead over Trump in Iowa.
Selzer attributed Harris’s lead to strong support among young, college-educated voters and older women. However, Trump ultimately won Iowa by a significant 14-point margin, securing 56% of the vote to Harris’s 42.7%.
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At a Monday press conference, Trump announced his intention to file a lawsuit against Selzer and the newspaper, asserting that the poll misrepresented his standing in the state.
“I’m not doing this because I want to. I’m doing this because I feel I have an obligation,” Trump said. He argued that the poll undermined confidence in his campaign, despite his eventual resounding victory in Iowa and across all seven battleground states. Trump also became the first Republican presidential candidate since 2004 to win the national popular vote.
Trump accused Selzer of manipulating data to show Harris in the lead. “Just before the election, they said I was going to lose Iowa by 3 or 4 points,” Trump said. “It became the biggest story all over the world. But I ended up winning by a landslide because the farmers love me, and I love the farmers.”
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In a November 7 op-ed for the Des Moines Register, Selzer acknowledged the inaccuracies in her poll but defended her methods. She maintained that the survey was conducted using the same methodology that had accurately predicted Trump’s victories in Iowa in 2016 and 2020. Selzer also speculated that the poll might have inadvertently motivated Republican voters to turn out in higher numbers.
“In response to critiques that I ‘manipulated’ the data or acted as part of some Democratic conspiracy, I noted that the findings could have energized Republican voters who might have otherwise become complacent. Maybe that’s what happened,” Selzer wrote.
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In a related legal matter, ABC News and its host George Stephanopoulos recently settled a defamation lawsuit with Trump. The network agreed to pay $15 million to Trump as a charitable contribution by December 24.
The lawsuit stemmed from a March 10 segment on “This Week,” during which Stephanopoulos falsely claimed Trump had been found liable for rape in a civil case involving E. Jean Carroll.
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