Star pollster J. Ann Selzer announces retirement after big miss in Iowa this year

Legendary Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer will retire from political polling after a 16-point miss in Iowa this year at the presidential level, which stunned many political observers given Ms. Selzer’s record on accurately predicting Iowa’s results over the past 25 years.

“In addition to election polling, my favorite projects helped clients learn something they didn’t know to help them evaluate options for their businesses, institutions or charities,” Ms. Selzer writes in a column for the Des Moines Register, which has contracted her pollsters . solid for decades. “That work can very well continue, but I knew a few years ago that the election part of my career was coming to an end.”

Ms. Selzer says she decided more than a year ago that her 2024 poll would be the last for the Des Moines Register.

“More than a year ago, I advised the Register that I would not renew when my 2024 contract expired at the last election poll while I move on to other ventures and opportunities,” Ms. Selzer wrote in her column.

Ms. Selzer gained national attention just days before this year’s 2024 presidential election as her latest survey suggested that Vice President Harris led President Trump by three points in Iowa — a state that broke decisively for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, and now dominated at the state level by the GOP.

Nationally, pollsters noted a dead heat between Ms. Harris and Trump, and liberals were quick to use Ms. Selzer’s election polling as evidence of a silent majority supporting the vice president this year, which pollsters didn’t notice. .

Ultimately, Trump won the state by 13 points.

“Would I have wanted to make this announcement after a final poll in line with Election Day results? Of course,” says Ms. Selzer. “It’s ironic that it’s quite the opposite. I am proud of the work I have 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 customers and they were happy with my work.”

Ms. Selzer tended to accurately predict the outcome of the Iowa election — sometimes almost to the decimal point — while other pollsters from outside the state could not. She was the pollster who found that President Obama would win the 2008 Iowa caucuses, that Senator Sanders would be tied with Senator Clinton in the 2016 caucuses, and that Senator Grassley would be re-elected by a twelve-point margin in 2022.

After her 2024 poll was released, Ms. Selzer sat for an interview with the Bulwark, a center-right anti-Trump digital channel. She told interviewer Tim Miller that one day she would probably miss something so egregious that it would mean the end of her credibility.

“I’m prepared for the fact that one day it won’t work, and I’ll be blown up into little pieces and scattered all over the city of Des Moines,” she said, laughing.