Veteran pollster announces she’s moving on ‘to other ventures’ after backlash to bombshell Iowa poll

Veteran pollster J. Ann Selzer announced she was done with election polling and moving on to “other ventures” after her pre-election poll in Iowa inaccurately showed Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of President-elect Donald Trump in the state he had easily won in 2016 and 2020.

“Over a year ago I advised the Register I would not renew when my 2024 contract expired with the latest election poll as I transition to other ventures and opportunities,” Selzer explained in an op-ed Sunday in the Des Moines Register.

“Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course. It’s ironic that it’s just the opposite. I am proud of the work I’ve done for the Register, for the Detroit Free Press, for the Indianapolis Star, for Bloomberg News and for other public and private organizations interested in elections. They were great clients and were happy with my work,” she continued.

A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll published November 2 found Harris leading Trump in Iowa 47% to 44%. This was a 7-point shift from Iowa polling in September, which found Trump had a 4-point advantage over Harris.

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In the previous two elections, Trump handily won the state by a significant margin, defeating Hillary Clinton by 9.4 percentage points in 2016 and Joe Biden by 8.2 percentage points in 2020.

“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” Selzer told the Des Moines Register at the time of Harris’ lead. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.” 

The pollster admitted in her November 17 op-ed the results were indeed “shocking,” but her “findings looked good” and her history of accuracy over 30 years of polling may have “made the outlier position too comfortable.”

“Polling is a science of estimation, and science has a way of periodically humbling the scientist. So, I’m humbled, yet always willing to learn from unexpected findings,” she wrote, thanking friends and family who have supported her amid critics questioning her “integrity.”

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A farmer shows support for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and a view on abortion on August 10, 2024, near Hawkeye, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Selzer’s polling set off a media firestorm in the final stretch of the 2024 election. Pundits on MSNBC, CNN and ABC’s “The View” all celebrated the forecast, as a sign that there was a broader shift in the Midwestern states to Harris.

“If this is accurate, and if anybody is accurate, it’s likely to be Ann Selzer in the Iowa poll. If this is accurate, it implies that Harris might be winning Iowa,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow gushed. 

Trump won Iowa for the third time this election, defeating Harris by over 14 percentage points.

In an op-ed for the Des Moines Register days after the election, Selzer said her team was reviewing the data and confessed she had been bombarded with questions asking if she had “manipulated” the data to show Harris with a false lead. 

She suggested her polling may have actually galvanized voters to support Trump.

A polling volunteer sanitizes a voting booth at a polling location for the 2020 Presidential election in Ankeny, Iowa, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. American voters, at least those who’ve not yet cast ballots, go to the polls Tuesday to choose between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden and cast votes in U.S. House and Senate races and state and local elections. Photographer: Rachel Mummey/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“In response to a critique that I ‘manipulated’ the data, or had been paid (by some anonymous source, presumably on the Democratic side), or that I was exercising psyops or some sort of voter suppression: I told more than one news outlet that the findings from this last poll could actually energize and activate Republican voters who thought they would likely coast to victory. Maybe that’s what happened,” she offered in her op-ed published November 7.

Commentators on social media seized on the polling after the election and mocked her over it.

“It was shockingly wrong,” journalist and broadcaster Piers Morgan posted on X. Trump just crushed Kamala in Iowa. Ms Selzer’s poll was a turkey of Biblical proportions.”

“Selzer is a disgrace,” Washington Free Beacon reporter Joe Simonson posted on X.

Fox News’ Brian Flood and Lindsay Kornick contributed to this article.

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