Disgraced Pollster Ann Selzer Retires After Iowa Poll Miss

Famed pollster Ann Selzer is retiring from her role at the Des Moines Register’s iconic Iowa Poll following her major miss in the 2024 election. The poll's reputation for being accurate was left in shambles following the release of a poll showing Kamala Harris up three points in the state.

"Kamala Harris now leads Donald Trump in Iowa—a startling reversal for Democrats and Republicans who have all but written off the state’s presidential contest as a certain Trump victory," the Des Moines Register reported mere days after the election. "A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows Vice President Harris leading former President Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters just days before a high-stakes election that appears deadlocked in key battleground states."

The poll fueled speculation about a potential upset in the 2024 presidential election; not only did it contradict other polls from different pollsters showing Trump comfortably ahead, it contradicted Selzer's previous polls showing Trump up double digits.

The poll’s findings gave Democrats a late burst of optimism and led them to the belief that Kamala Harris was going to win the election in a landslide.

Trump won Iowa by thirteen points, and swept all of the battleground states.

"Literally the first comment I saw on Twitter after her Harris +3 poll was someone saying it was time for her to retire," Mark Mitchell, the head pollster at Rasmussen Reports told me in response to the news. "The only question now, is did she just buy a lake house?"

Rasmussen Reports was among the most accurate pollsters of the 2024 election.

According to Kristin Roberts, the chief content officer for Gannett Media, the parent company of the Des Moines Register, told CNN that the Iowa Poll will “evolve as we find new ways to accurately capture public sentiment and the pulse of Iowans on state and national issues.”

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“Our mission is to provide trusted news and content to our readers and the public,” Roberts said in a statement. “We did not deliver on that promise when we shared results of the last Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, which did not accurately capture the outcome of the presidential election.”

Since its founding in 1943, the Iowa Poll has offered insight into how voters in the state intend to cast their ballots. Selzer began working on the poll in 1987 as a staffer for the Register before founding her own firm, Selzer & Co. of West Des Moines, which has conducted the poll on a contract basis since 1997.

Prior to the 2024 survey, the Iowa Poll under her stewardship had been considered by many to be the methodological gold standard. In the six other presidential elections Selzer has overseen, the poll has only missed the winner once (finding Democrat John Kerry up 5 points ahead of the 2004 election, when Republican George W. Bush ultimately won the state by less than a point), and its largest previous error on the margin came in 2008, when the final poll before the election found Barack Obama ahead by 17 points, significantly larger than his eventual 10-point win. As of June 2024, election forecaster Nate Silver gave Selzer an A+ rating.

Selzer claims that her decision to retire was made well before the terrible poll in an op-ed in the Des Moines Register.

Public opinion polling has been my life’s work. I collected my first research data as a freshman in college, if you don’t count a neighborhood poll I did at age 5. I’ve always been fascinated with what a person could learn from a scientific sample of a meaningful universe. 

Beyond election polls, my favorite projects were helping clients learn something they did not know to help them evaluate options for their companies, institutions or causes. That work may well continue, but I knew a few years ago that the election polling part of my career was headed to a close. 

Over a year ago I advised the Register I would not renew when my 2024 contract expired with the latest election poll as I transition to other ventures and opportunities. [emphasis added]

I'd say the same thing if I were her, too.

At the time the poll came out, I noted that “the mother of all suppression polls appears to have just dropped.”