A small footnote on a case I’ve written about several times in the past: In Iowa in 2024, esteemed pollster Ann Selzer — she of the “Iowa Poll,” the famously laser-accurate polling apparatus affiliated with the Des Moines Register, which had seemingly mastered this crucial, yet famously difficult-to-poll swing state — belly flopped in her final act: In her last poll before the election,, she showed Kamala Harris surprisingly leading 47–44 in the state (she would lose 56–43).
Embarrassing, and even perhaps motivated in its credulity — all good pollsters should report their outlier numbers, yet Selzer’s skepticism about Trump surely added to her enthusiasm in receiving such counterintuitive results — but perfectly understandable, as well as professionally par for the course. Except to Trump, that is, who (newly reelected, and flexing his litigious muscles) decided to sue both Selzer and the Des Moines Register under ridiculous grounds for “fraud.”
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