A poll in Iowa saw Democrat Harris ahead of Republican Trump in the US election. In the end, she lost significantly in the conservative state. Now he is suing the institute and a newspaper.
According to media reports, the future US President Donald Trump is suing a survey institute as well as a regional newspaper and its publisher over the publication of a voter survey in the US state shortly before the presidential election.
In the lawsuit, Trump accuses the regional newspaper The Des Moines Register and the poll institute of misleading all voters in Iowa and the United States through the survey “in order to improperly influence the outcome of the 2024 presidential election,” like the media quote from the statement of claim. It was “intentional”.
Poll in Iowa was way off
A few days before the US elections, the survey caused a stir: Democrat Kamala Harris was ahead of her rival Trump in the conservative state.
In the regional newspaper's survey in collaboration with the polling institute Selzer & Company, 47 percent of the likely voters surveyed said they wanted to vote for Harris – 44 percent would vote for Trump.
Other polls saw Trump ahead. He ultimately won the state by around 13 percentage points.
Newspaper company stands by reporting
The owner of the survey institute, Ann Selzer, is named as a defendant, according to the AFP news agency. After the election, she announced her retirement from the business. “Would I have liked to have made this announcement after a final poll consistent with Election Day results? Yes, of course,” she wrote. Selzer is considered a respected pollster in the USA.
A spokeswoman for the newspaper's parent company, Gannett, told CNN: “We stand by our reporting on this matter and believe this lawsuit is without merit.” According to the broadcaster, the regional newspaper informed that the pre-election survey did not reflect the election results. The complete data and technical explanations for the survey have been published.
Trump is also suing US broadcaster CBS
Trump threatened to sue at a press conference on Monday. “It costs a lot of money, but we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.” During the election campaign, he repeatedly described polls from which he was not the winner as fraudulent.
The Knight Institute at Columbia University, which advocates for free speech, criticized the lawsuit as “part of a larger effort by President Trump to prevent the press from reporting on issues of important public concern.”
The US President-elect regularly rails against the media and also takes legal action against them. Trump has also sued the US broadcaster CBS for damages. He accuses the media company of manipulating an interview with his opponent Harris in favor of the Democrat. The broadcaster rejected the allegations of manipulation.