President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday night accusing renowned Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, her polling firm, The Des Moines Register and its parent company Gannett of consumer fraud over a Nov. 2 poll that showed President Kamala Harris up 3 percentage points in the state which Trump ultimately won by double digits, NBC News reported.
The suit, filed in Polk County, Iowa, seeks "accountability for brazen election interference" and claims "Millions of Americans, including Plaintiff, residents of Iowa, and Iowans who contributed to President Trump's Campaign and its affiliated entities (the 'Trump 2024 Campaign'), were deceived by the doctored Harris Poll," according to the filing reviewed by NBC News.
"I'm doing this because I feel I have an obligation to. I'm going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time, and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by 3 or 4 points," Trump said Monday in discussing the suit, NBC News reported.
The suit accuses Selzer, long considered the gold standard of Iowa polling, of attempting to influence political races to favor Democrats. It states the "polling 'miss' was not an astonishing coincidence — it was intentional," according to NBC News.
After the election, Selzer announced she would stop polling political contests to pursue other ventures. Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA School of Law, immediately dismissed Trump's lawsuit, writing on his blog "I don't expect this lawsuit to go anywhere," NBC News reported.
Trump is bringing the claim under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive advertising. The 17 point difference between the poll and final result, his lawyers argue, constitutes "election-interfering fiction," according to the NBC filing.
The suit is the latest in a string of legal actions Trump has taken against perceived opponents since leaving office, from social media companies that banned him to the Pulitzer Prize board over awards given for reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election. None have gained significant legal traction to date, according to NBC News.
