President-elect Donald Trump is suing the Des Moines Register and its top pollster, J. Ann Selzer, for “brazen election interference” and fraud over its final 2024 presidential poll, which showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading him in Iowa despite his eventual victory by more than 13 percentage points,
The case was filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa, under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act and its associated provisions. It states that it seeks “accountability for brazen election interference committed by” Selzer, the Des Moines Register (DMR), and others “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.” The complaint also targets the Des Moines Register’s parent corporation, Gannett, which owns many other magazines, including USA Today.
Contrary to reality and challenging credibility, defendants’ Harris Poll was released three days before Election Day and claimed to show Harris leading President Trump in Iowa by three points; President Trump eventually won Iowa by more than thirteen points,” according to the complaint.
Selzer issued her last Des Moines Register-sponsored survey of Iowa only three days before the election, on November 2, with Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by three points. That startling survey showed a seven-point change from Trump to Harris since September, when he led the vice president by four points.
However, Trump eventually defeated Harris in Iowa by more than 13 percentage points.
However, the media highlighted Selzer’s survey before of the elections since her polling forecasts in past elections had been historically accurate.
According to Trump’s lawyers, Selzer’s projection of Harris’ three-point advantage in “deep-red Iowa was not reality, it was election-interfering fiction.”
Donald Trump’s lawyers claimed that Selzer “prided herself on a mainstream reputation for accuracy despite several far less publicized egregious polling misses in favor of Democrats” and that she “would have the public believe it was merely a coincidence that one of the worst polling misses of her career came just days before the most consequential election in memory, was leaked and happened to go against the Republican candidate.”
“The Harris Poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election,” according to the lawsuit. It further states that “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.”
“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.”
According to the complaint, Selzer, after more than 35 years in the profession, “retired in disgrace from polling less than two weeks after this embarrassing rout.”
The attorneys for Trump contend that “left-wing pollsters have attempted to influence electoral outcomes through manipulated polls that have unacceptable error rates and are not grounded in widely accepted polling methodologies.”
“While Selzer is not the only pollster to engage in this corrupt practice, she had a huge platform and following and, thus, a significant and impactful opportunity to deceive voters,” according to the complaint. “As Selzer knows, this type of manipulation creates a narrative of inevitability for Democrat candidates, increases enthusiasm among Democrats, compels Republicans to divert campaign time and money to areas in which they are ahead, and deceives the public into believing that Democrat candidates are performing better than they really are.”
The complaint alleges that the Democrats’ “need for fake polling was even more acute than usual in the 2024 Election, given Harris’s many fatal weaknesses as a candidate and lack of appeal to critical swaths of the traditional Democrat base.”
Trump’s lawyers are suing under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, claiming that defendants “engaged in a ‘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.'”
They further said that customers were “badly deceived and misled as to the actual position of the respective candidates in the Iowa Presidential race.”
“Moreover, President Trump, the Trump 2024 Campaign, and other Republicans were forced to divert enormous campaign and financial resources to Iowa based on the deceptive Harris Poll,” the lawsuit states, adding that customers of the Des Moines Register and Iowans who contributed to Trump’s 2024 campaign were “similarly deceived.”
Trump is demanding actual damages upon trial of the case; statutory damages three times the actual damages suffered; an order enjoining defendants’ “ongoing deceptive and misleading acts and practices relating to the Harris Poll and compelling defendants to disclose all information upon which they relied to engage in the deceptive and misleading acts relating to the Harris Poll; attorneys’ fees and costs associated with the case; and any other relief as deemed just and proper.
The complaint, filed Monday night, comes only hours after the president-elect said at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago that he intended to sue the Des Moines Register and Selzer.
The complaint comes only days after ABC News and its top anchor, George Stephanopoulos, struck a deal with Trump in his defamation action, which resulted in the network paying the President-Elect $15 million.
The settlement was officially disclosed on Saturday, disclosing the deal to avoid an expensive trial. According to the settlement, ABC News will make a charity gift of $15 million to a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past.”
In addition, the network will pay $1 million in Trump’s lawyers expenses.
Stephanopoulos and ABC News were also forced to submit “regret” remarks as an editor’s note at the bottom of a web piece published on March 10, 2024, about comments made earlier this year that caused Trump to bring the defamation case. The message begins with the following: “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”
ABC News said that the network was “pleased” to have resolved the issue.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms specified in the court filing,” an ABC News spokeswoman told Fox News Digital.
The Des Moines Register lawsuit and the ABC News settlement follow a succession of court triumphs for Trump and his legal team, led by senior legal counsel Boris Epshteyn.
Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan recently denied Special Counsel Jack Smith’s motion to drop his lawsuit against Trump in connection with the 2020 election. Smith also dropped his appeal in the classified records case on Monday, after a federal court dismissed the charges entirely in July, concluding that he was improperly appointed as special counsel.
In New York v. Trump, Judge Juan Merchan approved Trump’s request to submit a petition to dismiss the charges emanating from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case, removing the president-elect’s sentencing date off the calendar.
Merchan on Monday night denied Trump’s July appeal to reverse the guilty conviction on the basis of presidential immunity. Merchan has yet to decide on Trump’s formal petition to dismiss the allegations outright.
Trump is also suing CBS News for $10 billion in damages, alleging that the network engaged in “deceptive conduct” for the purpose of election meddling during an October interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
