Ann Selzer, the lead pollster for the Des Moines Register and up until Tuesday one of the most respected pollsters in America, released what will likely become the most memorable poll of the 2024 election cycle. The shock poll, released on Saturday night, found that Vice President Kamala Harris led President-elect Donald Trump by 3 points in the red state of Iowa.
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.”
Kamala Harris now leads Donald Trump in Iowa — a startling reversal for Democrats and Republicans who have all but written off the state’s presidential contest as a certain Trump victory.
A September iteration of the poll showed Trump with a 4-point lead over Harris. The June version of the poll showed Trump with an 18-point lead over President Joe Biden.
An hour before this poll was released, an Emerson College poll showed Trump with a 10-point lead over Harris in the state.
Selzer’s result came as a lightning bolt. The news delighted Democrats who thought that if Harris was outperforming in a red state, she could be headed for a national landslide.
Conversely, it sent the GOP into a collective state of apoplexy. Most Republicans did not believe the Iowa Poll. Some even saw it as a “suppression poll” designed to discourage Republican turnout on Election Day. After all, if your candidate is probably going to lose, why go to the trouble of casting your vote?
Up until Trump’s 13.2% victory over Harris in the state showed Selzer’s poll to be likely the worst call of the season, she had enjoyed a sterling reputation for accuracy and integrity.
In a Thursday op-ed published by the Register, Selzer exclaimed, “What a big miss for The Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll.” I’ll say!
Selzer told readers:
It followed an unprecedented worldwide fascination with an outlier poll showing Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 3 percentage points.
The final poll followed a surprising September poll showing the vice president had closed Trump’s lead over Biden in a June poll by 14 points. So, the October poll appeared the next step in an upward progression for Harris. Except that turned out not to be true.The team at Selzer & Company has begun a review to raise any plausible question of what happened between Thursday night the previous week, when we finished interviewing, and when the votes were tallied on Tuesday night. That work has begun, but it will be awhile before it is complete.
Then, Selzer laughably suggested that her poll (or rather the Iowa Poll, because she didn’t want to take sole responsibility for this turkey) may have actually “energized” and “activated” Republican voters who otherwise wouldn’t have bothered casting a vote. In other words, as Fox News reported it, “Iowa pollster Ann Selzer suggests her data could have galvanized Republican voters into proving it wrong.”
At any rate, Selzer continued:
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.
Or maybe that’s not what happened! We know that outlier polls happen in every election cycle. But this one was a doozy. It will live in infamy right alongside the ABC News/Washington Post poll (released on Oct. 28, 2020) that showed Biden ahead of Trump in Wisconsin by 17 points.
Although we don’t expect outliers to come from our top pollsters, it happens. But instead of trying to portray herself as some sort of savior for the GOP, Selzer might have tried a little humility.
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.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY