While many expert pollsters found their preliminary 2024 results to be faulty after Donald Trump’s Election Night win over Kamala Harris, J. Ann Selzer is determined to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
“Tonight, I’m of course thinking about how we got where we are,” Selzer said in a Tuesday statement to the Register. “The poll findings we produced for The Des Moines Register and Mediacom did not match what the Iowa electorate ultimately decided in the voting booth today.”
“I’ll be reviewing data from multiple sources with hopes of learning why that happened,” she continued. “And, I welcome what that process might teach me.”
The 2024 results were an uncharacteristic miss for Selzer, who has accurately predicted Iowa’s outcomes in every presidential election since 2008.
Ahead of Tuesday, the career pollster determined Harris was ahead of Trump 47% to 44%, with a 3.4 percent margin of error. However, Trump ultimately won Iowa by a full 14 percentage points (with 90% reporting).
In response to the inaccurate polling, Register executive editor Carol Hunter issued a statement of her own: “The Des Moines Register is closely reviewing the disparity between the results of the final Iowa Poll and the election results. Throughout its 81 years, the mission of the Iowa Poll has been to reflect the unvarnished opinions of Iowans, without pressure or interpretation from politicians, media or others. With rare exceptions, the final Iowa Poll before elections has tracked closely with the actual vote.”
“Register editors will work closely with pollster J. Ann Selzer to review all methodologies and other factors that may have impacted the difference,” she added. “The Iowa Poll has measured opinions of Iowans on everything from farm policy to traffic cameras to the quality of mental health services in the state. We want to ensure it accurately reflects the sentiments of Iowans moving forward.”
Of course, Selzer is far from the only pollster to be wrong this election cycle. In fact, “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart was so taken aback by the profession’s mass failure, that he only had one thing to say to pollsters during his Election Night special on Tuesday: “Blow me.”
