'Enjoy retirement': Veteran pollster mocked after Harris prediction in Iowa was 'shockingly wrong'

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.

"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," Selzer explained in an op-ed Sunday in the Des Moines Register.

"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," she continued.

A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll published November 2 found Harris leading Trump in Iowa 47% to 44%. This was a 7-point shift from Iowa polling in September, which found Trump had a 4-point advantage over Harris.

In the previous two elections, Trump handily won the state by a significant margin, defeating Hillary Clinton by 9.4 percentage points in 2016 and Joe Biden by 8.2 percentage points in 2020.

"It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming," Selzer told the Des Moines Register at the time of Harris' lead. "She has clearly leaped into a leading position." 

Selzer's polling set off a media firestorm in the final stretch of the 2024 election. Pundits on MSNBC, CNN and ABC's "The View" all celebrated the forecast, as a sign that there was a broader shift in the Midwestern states to Harris.

"If this is accurate, and if anybody is accurate, it’s likely to be Ann Selzer in the Iowa poll. If this is accurate, it implies that Harris might be winning Iowa," MSNBC host Rachel Maddow gushed. 

Trump won Iowa for the third time this election, defeating Harris by over 14 percentage points.

In an op-ed for the Des Moines Register days after the election, Selzer said her team was reviewing the data and confessed she had been bombarded with questions asking if she had "manipulated" the data to show Harris with a false lead. 

Commentators on social media seized on the polling after the election and mocked her over it.

"It was shockingly wrong," journalist and broadcaster Piers Morgan posted on X. Trump just crushed Kamala in Iowa. Ms Selzer’s poll was a turkey of Biblical proportions."

"Selzer is a disgrace," Washington Free Beacon reporter Joe Simonson posted on X.