Ann Selzer to step away from Iowa Poll with the Des Moines Register

Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer, whose most recent presidential projection was about 16 percentage points from the eventual count, says she is retiring from elections polling after 25 years of predicting results in the politically important Midwestern state.

She announced the decision with a guest column that published Sunday in the Des Moines Register, for which she has conducted the Iowa Poll since 1997. Selzer was among the most trusted pollsters in Iowa. Despite her saying her departure had been in the works for more than a year, right-wing critics were quick to note that Selzer’s latest presidential poll whiffed.

Selzer’s poll - conducted Oct. 28-31 and released Nov. 2, the Saturday before the election - caused a stir and sparked hope among Democrats when it showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading former president Donald Trump by 3 percentage points. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Trump ended up winning Iowa by 13 points, according to a Washington Post tally.

Selzer acknowledged the irony of leaving shortly after being so off the mark.

“Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course,” she said in the column. “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.”

In her 19-page analysis after the election, Selzer wrote: “I’ve read and listened to a lot of theories on the subject. To cut to the chase, I found nothing to illuminate the miss.”

Des Moines Register Executive Editor Carol Hunter wrote her own column about Selzer’s decision and the poll’s analysis. In it, she summarized Selzer’s review: “To date, no likely single culprit has emerged to explain the wide disparity.”

Hours after the poll’s release, the GOP nominee wrote on Nov. 3 that Selzer was a “Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time.”

“No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump. In fact, it’s not even close!” he wrote on his Truth Social network.

Pushback is nothing new for Selzer.

She was criticized in 2008 for her final Register poll that showed then-Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois was running away with the Iowa caucuses.

Selzer was right about the win, which stunned the nation and set him on the path to two terms in the White House. (As Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage: “The Iowa caucuses showed us the America we like to believe we live in, a country ready to embrace a man with brown skin as its leader.”)

Selzer’s final poll heading into the heated 2014 Senate race between Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst and Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley sent a shock wave through the political scene because it showed Ernst was up.

“I’ve heard it before. What else could they say? All I can do as a pollster at this point is wait and worry,” Selzer told the Post at the time. “We’ll know soon enough.”

Ernst won.

Selzer earned accolades from her peers. Elections website FiveThirtyEight - helmed by fellow pollster Nate Silver - published an article in January 2016 headlined “Ann Selzer Is The Best Pollster In Politics.”

She was the only major pollster who accurately predicted the top four finishers in Iowa - in the correct order - in her final poll before the 2004 caucuses, according to the Post.

But her departure from elections polling has been in the works for a while.

“She notified me over a year ago that she would not renew when her 2024 contract ended with publication of the pre-election poll,” Hunter wrote.

Selzer is leaving her field after a loss, but she isn’t retiring.

“Mentions of ‘retirement’ are inaccurate. It’s been a long-time plan that this election would be my last work of this sort. Other work continues,” she posted on X.

In her column, Selzer wrote that she is starting to “transition to other ventures and opportunities” but didn’t specify what those are. She said she will continue other work at her polling firm.