President-elect Trump filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer over a pre-election poll that showed Vice President Harris with a significant lead in Iowa. The poll, released just before Election Day, indicated Harris was ahead by 3 percentage points, but Trump ultimately won Iowa by 14 points.
Trump’s lawsuit, filed in Polk County, Iowa, accuses the pollster and the newspaper of violating the state’s consumer fraud laws, alleging intentional deception. The complaint claims that the polling error was not a coincidence but deliberate. The lawsuit demands unspecified damages and seeks an injunction to stop further “deceptive polls,” as well as a request for disclosure of the data used to produce the November poll.
The lawsuit, criticizes what Trump claims is a pattern of left-wing pollsters manipulating electoral outcomes with flawed polling methodologies. Trump contends that Selzer’s influential platform was used to mislead voters.
Trump’s legal battles with the media have intensified, including previous lawsuits against ABC, CBS, journalist Bob Woodward, and the Pulitzer Prize board. During a press conference on Monday, he referred to the Iowa poll as “fraud” and “election interference.”
The lawsuit names Selzer, her polling company, the Des Moines Register, and its parent company Gannett as defendants.
Selzer declined to comment, but a spokesperson for the Des Moines Register stood by the poll’s reporting, acknowledging the discrepancy but defending the methodology behind it, calling the lawsuit without merit.
