Iowa Judge Dismisses Trump Lawsuit Against Des Moines Register and Pollster Ann Selzer

State court rejects consumer-fraud claims over a pre-election poll on First Amendment grounds.

The Des Moines Register published its final Iowa Poll, conducted by J. Ann Selzer, three days before the November 2024 presidential election. It showed Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 3 points in Iowa; Trump carried the state by more than 13. Selzer later called the result a miss while saying she had followed her established methodology. Trump sued in December 2024, alleging the poll was consumer fraud and election interference. On 30 June 2025, Trump, Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks and former state Senator Brad Zaun filed a version of the suit in Iowa state court against Selzer, her firm, the Register and its owner Gannett, one day before an Iowa anti-SLAPP law took effect. That law directs courts to resolve suits over speech on matters of public concern at the earliest stage.

On 23 September 2026, Polk County District Judge Scott Beattie dismissed the suit with prejudice, rejecting its consumer-fraud, fraudulent-misrepresentation and negligent-misrepresentation counts. He held that the poll and its reporting were fully protected political speech, that a poll is a snapshot whose predictions cannot be proven false, and that the consumer fraud statute covers only consumer transactions. The case, he wrote, sought “to stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability.” Trump’s lawyers said they would appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court.