Longtime head of Iowa Poll retiring

DES MOINES — The longtime pollster J. Ann Selzer has announced she’s retiring from her election polling career after this latest election cycle where her final presidential poll has been widely criticized.

In a new Des Moines Register opinion piece, J. Ann Selzer announced she was ending her polling career, saying she notified the Register a year ago that she would not be renewing her contract when it expired at the end of 2024.

Selzer has worked with the Iowa Poll since 1987 as a Register staffer, but went on to create her own firm and continued her work on contract with the newspaper since 1997.

Selzer’s final poll before Election Day showed Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump 47-44% among likely voters in the state, but Trump ended up taking Iowa by a 56-43% margin, with Selzer later admitting that her poll was a big miss and suggesting that it might have actually energized and activated Republican voters who thought they would likely coast to victory.