Pollster retires after grossly inaccurate 2024 poll
A pollster is moving on from political polling following a wildly inaccurate poll that she released just before the 2024 presidential election.
The pollster, according to the New York Post, is J. Ann Selzer.
She was responsible for the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll that was recently just before the 2024 presidential election.
As we will see, the poll ended up being extremely inaccurate, which has led many to wonder whether it was negligently inaccurate or intentionally inaccurate. We'll leave that for you to decide.
The numbers
Selzer's poll was released on the Saturday before Election Day 2024.
The poll was just for the state of Iowa. What the poll showed was President-Election Donald Trump trailing Vice President Kamala Harris by 3 percentage points.
The poll, as soon as it was released, was immediately viewed with skepticism. This is because it was the only major poll that had Trump doing anything other than dominating Harris in the race. It is also because Trump dominated Iowa in both the 2016 and the 2020 elections.
For these reasons, many disregarded Selzer's poll, and the election proved that Selzer was indeed wrong. Trump, in the 2024 presidential election, won the state of Iowa by a whopping 13 percentage points.
Suffice it to say that Selzer is facing a lot of criticism for her poll.
Now, she's leaving.
Now, according to Fox News, Selzer has decided to move on from polling.
"Veteran pollster J. Ann Selzer announced she was done with election polling and moving on to "other ventures" after her pre-election poll in Iowa inaccurately showed Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of President-elect Donald Trump in the state he had easily won in 2016 and 2020," Fox reports.
The outlet goes on to quote the statement released by Selzer.
It reads:
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. Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course. It’s ironic that it’s just the opposite. I am proud of the work I’ve done for the Register, for the Detroit Free Press, for the Indianapolis Star, for Bloomberg News and for other public and private organizations interested in elections. They were great clients and were happy with my work.
It would appear that Selzer is standing behind her "work." The question is what exactly that "work" was: helping Harris to win the election or providing an accurate forecast of the election results.