We all remember it. On the Saturday evening before the election, Ann Selzer, the lead pollster for the Des Moines Register and one of the most respected pollsters in America, released a shock poll that will live in infamy. She found that Vice President Kamala Harris was ahead of President-elect Donald Trump in Iowa by three points. People were stunned because Iowa is a red state that Trump won in 2016 and in 2020. His campaign did not direct serious resources to the state this year because it was assumed he would win. In fact, one hour before Selzer published her results, an Emerson College poll was released that showed Trump ahead by 10 points.
The headline in the Register read: “Iowa poll: Kamala Harris leapfrogs Donald Trump to take lead near Election Day.” The lede said: “The nationally recognized Iowa Poll shows Kamala Harris picking up support from women to surpass Donald Trump in a ruby-red state he has won twice.”
The day before the election, the Daily Beast reported that, in an appearance on MSNBC, “famed pollster Ann Selzer” said Harris was winning because “abortion has gotten people interested in voting.” She doesn’t sound like a Trump voter, does she?
At any rate, given Selzer’s credibility, her poll sent shockwaves throughout the political world. Republicans panicked, and Democrats gloated. Over at CNN and MSNBC, hosts wondered if Harris was actually stronger than anyone had thought. If she’s outperforming in a red state, she could be headed for a national landslide.
Lo and behold, Trump won the state by 13 points. Selzer had missed by a whopping 16 points.
On Sunday, Selzer announced she was retiring from election polling. She will be moving on “to other ventures and opportunities.”
But she wants everyone to know she made the decision to retire over a year ago. It had nothing to do with her big miss. Got that?
According to Selzer:
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.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.
Does anyone believe her? I doubt it.
Perhaps the more important question to ask is how does someone, whose work has been considered “the gold standard” in her field, and who is intimately familiar with the political lay of the land in a state she’s been polling for 30 years, get it so wrong?
Five points? Seven? Okay. Polling is not an exact science. Outliers happen. But a double digit miss from an A+ rated pollster? [In her retirement announcement, Selzer wrote: “Over 30 years of polling led to an A+ rating in Nate Silver’s analysis of pollsters’ track records of accuracy. I earned that rating in Silver’s first list, and my grade never dropped.”]
For obvious reasons, there’s been speculation that Selzer had her thumb on the scale for Team Harris. Republicans wonder if the purpose of this poll was to sway the election. Three days ahead of the election, a reputable pollster comes out with a survey showing the GOP candidate losing to a Democrat in a red state. That could certainly dampen (some) Republican voters’ enthusiasm to go out and vote. That’s why these polls are sometimes called suppression polls.
Conversely, a result like this could energize Democrats who, prior to the poll didn’t think their candidate had a chance.
This is pure speculation. We have no way of knowing if this result occurred because it was based on an extremely unrepresentative sample of the target population or if something more nefarious was involved.
As one commenter noted, “Sometimes people just retire.”
That’s true, but sometimes they are forced to retire.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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