‘They’re Accusing Me of a Crime’: Pollster Ann Selzer ‘Mystified’ by Backlash to Iowa Prediction
The pollster who predicted Iowa would be won by presidential candidate Kamala Harris a day before the November election has revealed how she has been surprised by backlash.
Speaking on an edition of PBS’ Iowa Press, J. Ann Selzer defended her polling methods and hit back at critics who said she should be investigated.
“I am mystified about what motivation anybody thinks I had and would act on in such a public poll,” she said Friday. “I don’t understand it. And the allegations I take very seriously. They’re saying that this was election interference, which is a crime.
“The idea that I intentionally set up to deliver this response, when I’ve never done that before… I’ve had plenty of opportunities to do it. It’s not my ethic.”
The poll that shocked online communities and people across America showed the Democrats winning Iowa by three points.
Among those who accused Selzer of electoral fraud was president-elect Donald Trump.
“A totally Fake poll that caused great distrust and uncertainty at a very critical time,” he said after he had won. “She knew exactly what she was doing. Thank you to the GREAT PEOPLE OF IOWA for giving me such a record breaking vote, despite possible ELECTION FRAUD by Ann Selzer and the now discredited ‘newspaper’ for which she works. An investigation is fully called for!”
Though not mentioning him by name, the renowned Des Moines Register pollster was visibly emotional about the accusations she had suffered.
“To suggest without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with somebody, I was being paid by somebody, it’s all just kind of…it’s hard to pay too much attention to it except that they are accusing me of a crime,” she said.
She also explained how she had previously warned her poll could have impacted voters in Iowa.
“In response to a critique that I ‘manipulated’ the data, or had been paid by some anonymous source, presumably on the Democratic side, or that I was exercising psyops or some sort of voter suppression… 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 declared last month that she will no longer do electoral polling.
