US President-elect Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and its pollster, accusing them of "brazen election interference" for publishing a poll that showed Democrat Kamala Harris with a surprising lead of three percentage points in Iowa just before the election, The Associated Press reported on Tuesday.
The Register's parent company, Gannett Co., responded by dismissing the lawsuit as meritless and affirming its commitment to defending its First Amendment rights.
This legal action is part of Trump's broader campaign against media entities he believes have wronged him. Recently, ABC agreed to contribute $15 million towards a Trump presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit related to inaccurate claims made by George Stephanopoulos about Trump's civil liability for rape.
The contentious poll was conducted by now-retired pollster J. Ann Selzer, which suggested an unexpected shift in voter preference in the traditionally Republican-leaning state. Trump secured a victory in Iowa by over 13 percentage points in the actual election.
“There was a perfectly good reason nobody saw this coming: because a three-point lead for Harris in deep-red Iowa was not reality,” the lawsuit says, according to AP. “It was election-interfering fiction.”
Trump alleges the poll misled the public, energized Democrats unnecessarily, and forced Republicans to waste resources in areas where they were already dominant.
The lawsuit was filed in Polk County district court in Iowa, late on Monday. It leverages Iowa consumer fraud law and seeks a jury trial to determine damages, which could be tripled.
Lark-Marie Anton, a spokesperson for the Des Moines Register, conceded that the poll did not predict Trump's victory margin accurately but defended the publication's integrity, stating, "We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit."
Selzer, the pollster in question, has not yet responded to requests for comment this week. However, she recently told PBS in Iowa, "it’s not my ethic" to manipulate poll results, expressing confusion and frustration over accusations of bias or corruption.