A nationally recognized pollster is retiring from polling after releasing a poll that caused much jubilation and anxiety before Election Day.
J. Ann Setzer was the pollster behind the Iowa presidential poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris was leading then-former President Donald Trump by 3 points. The poll, released just days before the election, sent shockwaves through the media. Talking heads debated whether Harris could really have made such inroads in America’s blood-red heartland as Trump fought to chip away at the Democrat’s ‘Blue Wall.’
Ultimately, the poll proved to be erroneous. On Election Day, Trump went on to win the state by more than 13 percentage points.
Iowa was once a swing state. The state voted for George W. Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
However, since 2016, the Hawkeye State has remained in Trump’s category. Trump has improved his margins in Iowa each time he has run, taking it with 56% of the vote in the most recent general election.
In an op-ed for The Des Moines Register on November 17, Selzer claimed her departure has been in the works for over a year, and she plans to pursue “other ventures and opportunities.”
Selzer did not shy away from discussing the Iowa poll.
“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,” the veteran pollster wrote.
Selzer has resisted the notion that the infamous poll is pushing her out of her work, posting on X, “Oh, and 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.”
Contemporaneously announcing her departure, she released an autopsy of shorts on what went wrong with her poll. The document explores every theory for what could have gone wrong with the polling methods and gives the data that supports or disproves each theory.
Some theories explored include shifts in presidential preference amongst the non-college educated and “men of color.”
In the end, Selzer said, “To cut to the chase, I found nothing to illuminate the miss.”
X was flooded with reactions to her announcement. Some responses were supportive.
“I’m willing to defend Ann Selzer. She is a great pollster. But the poll clearly did oversample white progressive women and was a disaster. But OMG it gave the Democrats hope, which is the thing that kills ya,” user Eric Erickson posted on X.
Other respondents, however, were more critical.
“This was a last-minute attempt to suppress the GOP vote. It happens in 3rd world nations… You have to be the most incompetent idiot in the polling industry or you’re completely corrupt,” Rich Barris said on the Benny Johnson podcast.