Donald Trump filed a lawsuit against renowned Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, her polling firm The Des Moines Register, and Gannett on December 17, 2024, alleging consumer fraud over a pre-election poll that showed him trailing Kamala Harris.
The lawsuit centers on a November 2, 2024, poll that predicted Harris would win Iowa by 3 percentage points (47% to 44%). However, Trump ultimately won the state by 13 percentage points, leading his legal team to claim this constituted “election-interfering fiction.”
Trump is pursuing the case under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive advertising. The suit argues that “millions of Americans” were deceived by “the doctored Harris Poll.”
The Des Moines Register stands firmly behind its reporting, having released full demographics, crosstabs, a technical explanation from the pollster (who has since retired), and both weighted and unweighted data after the election. Their spokesperson, Lark-Marie Anton, called the lawsuit “without merit.”
At the time of this writing in January 2025, legal experts are skeptical about the lawsuit’s chances of success. Clay Calvert, a media law expert from the University of Florida, suggests the real aim might be to “intimidate the press and journalists” rather than win in court and that this lawsuit is “just a harbinger of things to come.”
The lawsuit represents Trump’s latest action against media coverage he considers biased, following a $15 million settlement announced on December 14, 2024, with ABC News in a defamation case.
