You don't say: Ann Selzer to Step Away...
The 2024 election was a clusterfuck of hope and prayers, but the architects of this and the fallout from the poor structural work will become the new Thomas Guide for future national elections.
Picture yourself, Saturday night, November second, 2024, 7:00PM EDT, and the shot heard ‘round the world dropped. Ann Selzer, the vaunted pollster of the Des Moines Register dropped her final pre-election polls for Iowa, a bellweather state, and they showed Harris LEADING Trump.
The excitement in the left of center ecosystem, and much of the friendly center-right former Republicans who were the cohort of Never Trump was palpable.
Holee sheeit, this was going to happen. Suddenly you had people beginning to posit that maybe a wipeout for MAGA and Trumpism was not just a possibility, but a certitude.
But then the election happened, and Trump crushed Harris in Iowa.
This morning’s WaPo has this headline:
Gee, maybe her mojo is not so infallible.
Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer 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.
This is probably the least surprising take.
The most recent presidential poll caused a stir when it showed Vice President Kamala Harris with a slight edge over former president Donald Trump in the red state, sparking hope among Democrats. That edge didn’t show up in the election results.
Selzer’s poll — which was conducted Oct. 28-31 and released Nov. 2, the Saturday before the election — said Harris was leading by 3 percentage points. Trump ended up winning Iowa by 13 points, according to a Washington Post tally.
But don’t worry, she says that this huge fuckin’ miss isn’t the reason why she’s stepping away. No, it was always in the plan.
Selzer acknowledged the irony of retiring 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.”
Yeah, that is irony. I hope you read that passage with your eyes rolling up hard.
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 Nov. 3 release, the GOP nominee wrote that Selzer was a “Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time.”
Oh well, enough dunking on Ms. Selzer.
I am working on a larger piece on how all the prior election truths and strategies are no longer relevant.
In fact, whilst I grumble at the legacy corporate media, I do not think that if they had taken a more hard-line stance, covering the insanity better, uplifting the Biden Administration’s accomplishments would have made one iota of a difference.
Nope, a lot of political consultants who have gotten fat off of providing campaign support to traditional candidates are likely to be the biggest losers going forward.
And I am not going to shed even one crocodile tear for the likes of Jeff Roe and his ilk. I hope they end up on the soup kitchen circuit.
Two cheers for Selzer actually publishing her poll results...three cheers for doing the right thing post-election, as few pollsters would dare to fall on their swords after effing up so badly.
“Nope, a lot of political consultants who have gotten fat off of providing campaign support to traditional candidates are likely to be the biggest losers going forward”
Geoff, do you think the Democrats consultant class will be jettisoned or do you think they’ll do what they look poised to do - pivot harder to the center, throw trans people under the bus and elect Rahm Emanuel as the next party chair? Curious what your thoughts are.