Hysterical Report Came Out A Year Ago

By
Mark Stevens
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It’s been one full year since Ann Selzer — once hailed as the “gold standard” of Iowa polling — dropped a political jaw-dropper that aged like milk on a midsummer sidewalk. On the eve of the 2024 election, Selzer’s final Iowa poll showed then-President Kamala Harris up three points over Donald Trump in the Hawkeye State. The result? Trump carried Iowa by a whopping sixteen-point margin.

That’s a nineteen-point polling miss in a state that has long prided itself on separating hype from heartland. “Oopsie-doodle,” indeed.


To this day, Selzer insists the poll wasn’t election interference. But even if it wasn’t, the effect was unmistakable: it fueled headlines, boosted Democratic morale, and gave mainstream media outlets like MSNBC — and particularly Rachel Maddow — a convenient narrative to amplify just as voters were heading to the polls. “Look! Iowa’s flipping!” they exclaimed. “Harris is surging!” Spoiler: she wasn’t.

What made the poll so suspicious wasn’t just the numbers — although those were egregious enough — but the timing. Releasing a data set showing a late-breaking Harris lead in a deeply red state, just days before voters cast their ballots, didn’t pass the smell test. Especially not when every other major pollster — even left-leaning outfits — had Trump up by high single to low double digits.


And yet, Selzer’s numbers became the headline. They accomplished what the Democrats needed: an eleventh-hour boost to enthusiasm in a race where the energy gap was visible from space. “If Harris is up in Iowa,” the thinking went, “we must be winning everywhere.” Except, of course, they weren’t.

In hindsight, it’s hard not to see the Selzer poll as emblematic of the media-politics feedback loop we’ve seen in recent cycles. A rogue number gains traction, gets amplified by friendly media voices, and morphs into momentum — not because it’s true, but because people want it to be. And when it turns out to be dead wrong? The damage is done. The apology (if any) is footnoted. The “Oops!” becomes a footnote in history.


Well, not this time.

Because one year later, voters still remember the games played in those closing days. They remember how the Selzer poll was weaponized. They remember how wrong the experts were. And most of all, they remember that a state like Iowa — where the people still call it straight — saw through the fog and voted with clarity.

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