President-elect Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer, accusing them of “brazen election interference” over a final poll that showed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris leading in Iowa. Trump ultimately won the state by more than 13 points. The poll, widely circulated nationally, was used to argue that Trump was trailing Harris in the race.
The lawsuit, filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa, under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act and related provisions, seeks “accountability for brazen election interference committed by” the Register and Selzer “in favor of now-defeated former Democrat candidate Kamala Harris through use of a leaked and manipulated Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll conducted by Selzer and S&C and published by DMR and Gannett in the Des Moines Register on Nov. 2, 2024,” Fox News reported.
Gannett, the parent company of the Des Moines Register and owner of other publications such as USA Today, is also named in the lawsuit.
The suit states, “Contrary to reality and defying credulity, defendants’ Harris Poll was published three days before Election Day and purported to show Harris leading President Trump in Iowa by three points; President Trump ultimately won Iowa by over thirteen points.”
The poll, released by Selzer on November 2, showed Harris leading by three points—a seven-point shift from September, when Trump had been ahead by four points. Selzer’s polling was widely referenced in the media, as her past election predictions were considered historically accurate.
Trump’s attorneys argued that Selzer’s prediction of a Harris lead in “deep-red Iowa was not reality, it was election-interfering fiction” and claimed that the “Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election.” The lawsuit further notes that Selzer, a veteran pollster of over 35 years, “retired in disgrace from polling less than two weeks after this embarrassing rout.”
The lawsuit also asserts that “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,” adding that “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.”
Trump’s attorneys allege that the defendants “engaged in an ‘unfair act or practice’ because the publication and release of the Harris Poll ‘caused substantial, unavoidable injury to consumers that was not outweighed by any consumer or competitive benefits which the practice produced,’” asserting that voters were “badly deceived and misled as to the actual position of the respective candidates in the Iowa Presidential race.”
Trump addressed the poll in an interview with Time magazine after being named “Person of the Year,” stating, “She did it up four. That was a big story, because I was only up four and then she did where I was down three, and that became headlines all over the place just before the election.”
During a Monday morning press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump confirmed that a lawsuit was forthcoming in Iowa, emphasizing that the poll showing him losing shortly before the election became “the biggest story all over the world.” Speaking about Selzer, he remarked, “She’s gotten me right always, she’s a very good pollster, she knows what she was doing.”
More lawsuits coming! We need a great media. We need a fair media. We need borders. we need free and fair elections. pic.twitter.com/G1psrf1kzp
— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) December 16, 2024
