Trump Sues Des Moines Register, Pollster Over Outlier Poll

Former President Donald Trump speaks in Fla. on Feb. 16, 2024. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump sued the Des Moines Register and a pollster on Dec. 16 for publishing a poll ahead of the 2024 election that showed Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of Trump in Iowa.

The poll, conducted by the Register and a polling partner, found that 47 percent of respondents chose Harris, compared with 44 percent for Trump. The poll drew widespread attention because Iowa typically chooses Republicans, and other polls done in the state had Trump ahead.

Trump ended up winning Iowa with 56 percent of the vote.

According to the lawsuit, the poll amounted to “brazen election interference,” in violation of state law.

Trump’s suit pointed to the divergence between other recent polls conducted by pollster Ann Selzer and her company, which carried out the Trump-Harris poll, and the actual election results. The pollster, for instance, released a poll in 2022 in the Iowa attorney general race showing Republican Brenna Bird behind incumbent Democrat Tom Miller by 16 points. Bird ultimately defeated Miller by two points.

The pattern shows that Selzer “has quietly used her polls to try and influence recent races in favor of Democrats,” the suit says.

Iowa law prohibits people from engaging in acts that they know or reasonably should know are unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent.

“The Harris Poll was deceptive and misleading, unfair, and the result of concealment, suppression, and omission of material facts about the true respective positions of President Trump and Harris in the Presidential race, all of which were known to Defendants and should have been disclosed to the public,” the suit alleges.

It names the Register, Selzer, her company, and the Register’s parent company, Gannett, as defendants.

Trump is seeking damages. He also wants a Polk County judge to enter an order barring defendants from deceptive and misleading acts and forcing them to disclose all information they relied on to engage in the allegedly illegal acts related to the poll.

Selzer, in an email to The Epoch Times, declined to comment.

“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,” a spokesperson for the Des Moines Register told The Epoch Times in an email. “We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit.”

The paper said in an editorial that a review of the poll did not pinpoint any one factor as resulting in the discrepancy between the poll results and the election results.

“The reality is that more people supporting Donald Trump turned out,” Selzer said during an interview after the election. “I’m eagerly awaiting the Secretary of State’s turnout reports that will happen in January to see what we can glean from that.”

Selzer retired after the election, a move she said was planned a year ago.

Trump has a number of other lawsuits against media companies.

Trump recently reached a settlement with ABC News and its anchor, George Stephanopoulos. The defendants agreed to pay Trump $1 million in attorney fees, donate $15 million to charity, and issue an apology.

Stephanopoulos falsely said that Trump was found liable for rape by a jury. Jurors found Trump liable for sexual abuse but did not find him liable for rape.

Last fall, he sued CBS over its interview with Harris, alleging the company illegally interfered in the election with its cuts to the video.

CBS has said it did nothing wrong.