Trump sues Des Moines Register, pollster for 'brazen election interference' over faulty polling in presidential race

President-elect Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer for "brazen election interference" over their final poll that showed Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris ahead in Iowa. Trump ended up winning the state by more than 13 points. The poll was picked up nationally and used as an argument that Trump was behind Harris in the race.

The lawsuit was filed in Polk County, Iowa Monday night under the Iowa Consumer Fraud act and related provisions of the act, Fox News reported. The suit seeks "accountability for brazen election interference committed by" the Register and Selzer "in favor of now-defeated former Democrat candidate Kamala Harris through use of a leaked and manipulated Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll conducted by Selzer and S&C and published by DMR and Gannett in the Des Moines Register on Nov. 2, 2024."

Also included in the lawsuit is Gannet, the parent company of the Des Moines Register. Gannet owns many other publications, including USA Today. 

The lawsuit stated, "Contrary to reality and defying credulity, defendants’ Harris Poll was published three days before Election Day and purported to show Harris leading President Trump in Iowa by three points; President Trump ultimately won Iowa by over thirteen points."

The poll was released by Selzer on November 2, just three days before the election. It showed Harris leading by three points, a seven-point shift from September when Trump was leading by four points. Selzer’s poll was latched on to by the media in the days before the election, as her polling predictions in prior elections had been historically accurate. 

Trump’s attorneys wrote that her prediction of the Harris lead in "deep-red Iowa was not reality, it was election-interfering fiction" and that the "Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election." The suit later noted that Selzer, who had been in the industry over 35 years, "retired in disgrace from polling less than two weeks after this embarrassing rout."

The lawsuit stated that the "defendants and their cohorts in the Democrat Party hoped that the Harris Poll would create a false narrative of inevitability for Harris in the final week of the 2024 Presidential Election," adding that "Instead, the November 5 election was a monumental victory for President Trump in both the Electoral College and the Popular Vote, an overwhelming mandate for his America First principles, and the consignment of the radical socialist agenda to the dustbin of history."

Trump’s attorneys alleged that the defendants "engaged in an ‘unfair act or practice’ because the publication and release of the Harris Poll ‘caused substantial, unavoidable injury to consumers that was not outweighed by any consumer or competitive benefits which the practice produced,’" and that consumers were "badly deceived and misled as to the actual position of the respective candidates in the Iowa Presidential race."

Trump had spoken on the poll in his interview with Time magazine after being awarded "Person of the Year," stating, "She did it up four. That was a big story, because I was only up four and then she did where I was down three, and that became headlines all over the place just before the election."

In a Monday morning press conference from Mar-a-Lago, Trump said that a lawsuit was forthcoming in Iowa, saying that the poll showing him losing just before the election became "the biggest story all over the world." He added of the Selzer, "she’s gotten me right always, she’s a very good pollster, she knows what she was doing."