Donald Trump is suing the Des Moines Register and veteran pollster Ann Selzer over the final poll released days before the election showing him losing Iowa to Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Selzer’s last poll shows Harris ahead of Trump by 3 points, 47%—44%, within the poll’s margin of eeror.
But on election day, Trump soundly defeated Harris in the state by a 13 points, winning the actual vote 56-43%.
In their lawsuit attorneys for Trump called Selzer’s poll an act of “brazen election interference.”
Selzer and the Register “engaged in an ‘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,” the lawsuit added.
The attorneys went on to accuse Selzer of attempting to interfere in the election with poll.
“For too long, 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,” the lawsuit states.
“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,” it continued.
But, Selzer has theorized that her poll may have actually helped Trump by “energize[ing] and activate[ing] Republican voters who thought they would likely coast to a victory.”
Lark-Marie Anton, a spokesperson for the Register defended the poll in a statement.
“We have acknowledged that the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer,” Anton said.
“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit,” Anton added.
This lawsuit comes days after ABC News settled a Trump defamation case against the network for $15 million.
Trump has threatened more legal actions against the media including lawsuits against CBS, journalist Bob Woodward and the Pulitzer Prize board.
