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Iowa pollster Ann Selzer suggests her data could have galvanized Republican voters into proving it wrong
By Lindsay Kornick
Published November 08, 2024
Pollster J. Ann Selzer suggested her pre-election Iowa poll showing Vice President Kamala Harris in the lead had "energize[d] and activate[d] Republican voters" to prove it wrong in her post-mortem Thursday.
Her Des Moines Register/Mediacom shock poll showed a 7-point shift from President-elect Donald Trump to Harris from September, when he had a 4-point lead over the vice president (47% to 43%), to Saturday when she was up 3 (47% to 44%), in a state Trump had carried easily in 2016 and 2020 and hadn't been considered a swing state in 2024.
Much of the media took her words as gospel, as pundits on MSNBC, CNN and ABC’s "The View" all celebrated the forecast, hoping it was a positive sign for Harris on Election Day. After the results came in, Trump supporters and conservatives quickly slammed and mocked Selzer’s poll.
Selzer wrote in an op-ed for the Des Moines Register that she had been getting bombarded with criticism and questions. In response, she suggested her poll itself may have shifted the state for Trump.
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)
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"My inbox and my voice mail have been full of questions the last few days — those who wanted to know why I ‘manipulated’ the data to show a false Harris lead, and those who wondered if the data were too good to be true," Selzer wrote.
She 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."
Selzer added that her team is working to review what happened and "raise any plausible question" about the data. She also admitted she "had a sense of the late shift" after listening to voters in the days leading up to the election.
President-elect Donald Trump won the state of Iowa by over 10 points on Tuesday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
"The last few days featured proportionately more women who had been consistent Democratic voters opting for Trump. Absent was a counterpart of consistent Republican voters opting for Harris, the kind of cohort led nationally by Liz Cheney. A few months ago, one woman still making up her mind said something that has stuck with me. Trump disgusted her, but Harris scared her. I doubt I can find data that can reveal how common these thoughts were," Selzer wrote. "But I will go looking, both to confirm or deny the underlying theory."
Despite emphasizing her team reviewing the data, Selzer defended her methods, insisting they have not changed since the last presidential election.
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"My philosophy in public opinion research is to take my best shot at revealing the truth of a future event, in this case Election Day. Without fear or favor, we used the same method as the final poll this year to show a healthy Trump lead in both 2020 and 2016. Those turned out to capture the mood of the electorate reasonably well, though both took fire from Iowans who doubted the findings could be true," she wrote.
Selzer suggested Vice President Kamala Harris was ahead of Trump by 3% in Iowa. (AP/Alex Brandon/Mike Stewart)
Trump won Iowa's 6 electoral votes Tuesday night by a comfortable 13-point margin, 56% to 43%.
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