J. Ann Selzer, a pollster for The Des Moines Register, adamantly denied attempting to skew an electoral survey during the 2024 presidential election.
“I am mystified about what the motivation anybody thinks I had and would act on in such a public poll,” Selzer said in a Friday interview with PBS’s “Iowa Press.”
“So, the idea that I intentionally set up to deliver this response, when I’ve never done that before, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do it, it’s not my ethic,” she told me.
“To infer without a single shred of proof that I was in cahoots with someone or being paid by anybody, it’s all just sort of… “It’s hard to pay too much attention to it except that they’re accusing me of a crime,” she remarked in response to President-elect Trump’s allegations of her bad intentions.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Selzer’s survey, which showed him down by three points, was “fake”.
“A totally fake poll that caused great distrust and uncertainty at a very critical time,” Trump tweeted after winning the state’s electoral votes by a 16-point margin.
“She understood just what she was doing. “Thank you to the GREAT PEOPLE OF IOWA for giving me such a record-breaking vote, despite possible election fraud by Ann Selzer and the now-discredited ‘newspaper’ for which she works,” he said.
“An investigation is fully called for!”
In the midst of turmoil, Selzer said that she will pursue “other ventures” after the November election.
