President Donald Trump has sued famous pollster J. Ann Selzer, her firm Selzer & Company, The Des Moines Register, and its parent company Gannett for violating Iowa’s consumer fraud laws after it published arguably fake data two days before the 2024 general election. Trump is alleging it wasn’t an unintentional mistake that led to the warped results being broadcast to the key election state of Iowa.
Selzer, using unknown methods to support her claim, predicted that Kamala Harris had the lead in Iowa. Trump says that pushing that narrative, Selzer was trying to help Democrats win the state.
The poll, released Nov. 2, said Harris was winning by 3 points — 47% to Trump’s 44%.
In fact, Trump won Iowa by nearly a landslide of 56%, a full 14 point difference. There is, at least, an appearance that both the newspaper and its pollster were colluding.
“In my opinion, it was fraud, and it was election interference,” Trump said.
“The [Kamala] Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,” the court filing says. Read it at this link.
After her disastrous embarrassment in Iowa, Selzer said she will no longer do election polling, but will move on to “other opportunities.”
Nearly all election polls overstate the strength of liberal/progressive candidates and only a handful of pollsters are considered nonpartisan. Reliable pollsters are hard to come by; in Alaska, Dittman Research is considered the most credible. On the national level, Rasmussen Reports, which is conservative, has an acknowledged built-in bias but ends up with fairly credible results.
Earlier this month, Trump agreed to a settlement with ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos said on television that Trump had been found guilty of rape. He was not found guilty of rape, but of defamation and sexual abuse of his accuser. ABC has agreed to pay Trump $15 million, earmarked for his presidential library.
Will Trump now go after all the columnists and social influencers who called him a Nazi or fascist during the campaign? If so, he’ll have many Democrats and socialists to litigate against.
At one time in America, falsely calling someone a Nazi was de facto libel or slander, but the phrase is being tossed around liberally these days by many liberals and social media account-holders.
Here are a few examples of news organizations that used the terms Trump, Hitler, Nazi, and fascist in headlines and made the implication that Trump fit the description. These organizations may be able to away with it because of how they carefully couched their terms:
How Trump’s rhetoric compares to historic fascist language – PBS
What Does It Mean That Donald Trump Is a Fascist? – New Yorker
Harris says Trump ‘is a fascist’ – AP
DNC projects message tying Trump to Hitler – NBC
Donald Trump’s history with Adolf Hitler and his Nazi writings – ABC
Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini – The Atlantic
FiveThirtyEight, a polling news reporting company owned by ABC, wrote that the Trump lawsuit is disturbing.
“This would obviously be a baseless lawsuit, but just saying this has a chilling effect, and most pollsters don’t have the financial resources for a legal battle,” wrote Nathaniel Rakich, senior editor at FiveThirtyEight, on X/Twitter.
Lol. That’s the pot calling the kettle black. With Rudy, his best friend pleading guilty to obstruction and election interference. Had to turn over his beloved mercedes car. He worked closely with trumps AG pock Bondy, who worked side by side with Rudy. He just can’t give it up. He’s always got to fight, fight, fight whether he’s got a hole in his ear or not.
Rudy never pled guilty in the Georgia election interference case. So the video of the election officials pulling out the hidden suit cases of ballots was a hoax? Are you sure your not mixing your meds up?
I am sure he’s mixing up his meds or, more likely, using some he shouldn’t.
Yeah maybe. It was the defamation case.
Yeah, trial coming.
I’d say we reached the height of hypocrisy, but Trump isn’t even sworn in yet. I think he can push the hypocrisy record still higher. I have faith in him.
Trump said he was not taking money from us to be POTUS What he didn’t tell you is the Stupid Democraps will be paying him via lawsuits
“……….Will Trump now go after all the columnists and social influencers who called him a Nazi or fascist during the campaign?……..”
We can only hope.
Lawyers and wealthy people will benefit greatly with Trump in office, everyone else not so much
How much did the Biden family take in to sell out our country?
The hot tears and whiney petulance by some in this comment section is delicous.
The schadenfreude continues. Ty guys!
Deal! Cried the losers!
There are people who actually believe election polls? They must be pretty dumb.
Convicted felon Trump suing Ann Selzer because he didn’t like her Iowa poll is absurd considering his repeated lies about how he was polling in places like New York and Minnesota where he said he would win. The most thin-skinned insecure little man on planet Earth! BTW- the stock market has went down every day since the stable genius rang the opening bell? Good times ahead for your 401K’s! You do recall he bankrupted a few casinos amongst numerous other failures. On the other hand if you have been sitting on Tesla stock it’s party time!
Trump is not a convicted felon. Kangaroo Courts in NY don’t count. Do you see him in jail? Nope and you never will.
He was convicted kangaroo or not. Sentencing has been put on hold until he leaves office. The other stuff was civil and not jailable.
And then off to the NY appellate court for the convictions reversal. How many members of Congress have used the tax payers slush fund they created to pay hush money?
Robert Hansen always thought he was tried in kangaroo court and deserved to be released. Jim, stop with the imaginary thinking, it’s unbecoming.
This will get tossed, conducting a bad poll is not influencing an election. If it was Fox would have lost more money than they already have. This is Trump’s attempt to intimidate the press into not publishing negative stories about him. The USA is about to find out how bad its going to get. Mexico didn’t pay for wall the US Tax Payers did. China, Canada and Mexico aren’t going to pay for the tariffs, the US citizens will. The only thing he is going to hold try on is to lower the tax on the wealthy. Votes have consequences and the people have selected him once again.
I’m glad he can’t touch any of mine.
So, you’re saying we’d be better off with Kakkling Kamala? Yes, these last 4 years have just been wonderful.
Nope, not saying that. Just saying not heir trump.
Then who should have been POTUS? Tell us all oh great Greg…
That wasn’t my call. Just not Trump. That’s all I have EVER said.
BBC reports:
“Spokesperson for the Des Moines Register Lark-Marie Anton said it has already released the “the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer”, and that it has acknowledged that the poll “did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa”.
“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit,” she said in a statement to BBC’s news partner CBS News.”
Polling is a statistically significant sampling of a population. Good pollsters declare a margin of error. In this poll, the margin of error was 3.4, according to the Des Moines Register:
“The final poll showed Harris leading Trump, 47% to 44%. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points, meaning Harris’ lead was within the margin of error.”
The results of the poll- in the margin of error- did declare that Trump could prevail- just not by the margin that he actually did on election day.
Now lets suppose Must Read Alaska was sued by some liberal group with dark money, deep pockets, because MRA published a story about a poll- and the liberals were unhappy. The dark money group can throw millions at litigation. How much could MRA afford to spend on lawyers trying to defend itself?
There are all sorts of reasons a pollster might not offer an accurate poll. Maybe they got the demographics wrong. Maybe the voters changed their minds right after the poll. Maybe the sample size wasn’t big enough.
Do pollsters now have to get legal disclaimers to go along with every poll they publish? The lawyers will love that. Everyone else, not so much.
Nothing like sending the low hanging fruit to the gallows.
Good. Keep hitting them, hit them until they’re rocked back on their heels and up against the ropes. The media has gone decades without being held accountable. This course correction began with Nick Sandman, Raul and Shannon Armenta’s son at the Kansas City Chief’s game and continues. If ethics are not something that the media can regain, then it should be financially imposed on them through the courts. This is the way.
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