The Iowa pollster who made a wildly inaccurate prediction that Kamala Harris would win in the deep red state now claims she may have helped Donald Trump.
J. Ann Selzer, known for her past predictions in The Hawkeye State, admitted her research was completely wrong.
Furthermore, she believes posting a survey that had Harris leading Trump by three in a state Democrats hadn’t won since 2008 may have emboldened MAGA nation.
She wrote Thursday: ‘I told more than one news outlet that the findings from this last poll could actually energize and activate Republican voters who thought they would likely coast to victory. Maybe that’s what happened.’
Selzer added on Tuesday she was ‘thinking about how we got where we are.’
‘My philosophy in public opinion research is to take my best shot at revealing the truth of a future event, in this case Election Day,’ wrote Selzer.
‘Without fear or favor, we used the same method as the final poll this year to show a healthy Trump lead in both 2020 and 2016. Those turned out to capture the mood of the electorate reasonably well, though both took fire from Iowans who doubted the findings could be true.’
She continued to try and defend her methodology, which came as a complete shock to the systems of voters the weekend prior to the election.
‘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,’ she said.
‘I’ll be reviewing data from multiple sources with hopes of learning why that happened, and I welcome what that process might teach me.’
Selzer’s poll for the Register and Mediacom days before the election predicted Harris would win by +3 percentage points. But Donald Trump went on to trounce the vice president by over +13 points in the Hawkeye State.
Selzer’s poll in the days before the election were an uncharacteristic mistake for the longtime pollster, and it gave many liberals false hope that Harris was performing better than expected.
They credited it to fury among Iowa women both liberal and conservative over the state’s abortion crackdown.
Iowa has become a Republican-leaning state, with Trump winning the state by +9 percent over Joe Biden in 2020 and +10 percent over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
However, the state has not always been reliably red, and swung for Barack Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 elections by +9 percent and +6 percent, respectively.
Selzer had accurately predicted each of these outcomes going back to 2008, giving her a Nostradamus-like reputation that drew eyeballs to her incorrect Harris poll last week.
The humiliation also led Register executive editor Carol Hunter to issue a statement to readers explaining why they published the poll.
‘The Des Moines Register is closely reviewing the disparity between the results of the final Iowa Poll and the election results,’ Hunter said in a statement.
‘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.
‘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.’