Summary
Renowned pollster Ann Selzer is defending herself against accusations from Donald Trump and his supporters after her final Iowa pre-election poll underestimated Trump’s support by 19 points.
The poll showed Trump losing by 3 points, but he won by 16.
Trump alleged on Truth Social that Selzer deliberately rigged the poll, calling for an investigation.
Selzer denied the claims on Iowa PBS, asserting she has never intentionally manipulated poll results and finds the accusations serious and baseless.
The only thing Ann Selzer did wrong was trust her methodology. If you take a lot of samples, some of them will be outliers, wecome to statistics. Reminds me of the classic stats homework assignment to toss a coin 100 times. The fakers are easy to find because none of the streaks are long enough, aka, no outliers.
Other pollsters would have tossed the result simply because it was different. Those pollster suck. You’re supposed to do what Ann did because that is the only way to converge on the actual value.
How cute, you still think we live in a reality where facts matter.
This is Trumpworld now, and we are all just stuck living in it. And in Trumpworld, facts don’t matter if Trump doesn’t like them. And expect to see a lot more of this. It’s why Jeff Bezos, ABC, MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, and George Stephonopolous all bent the knee. Because “Freedom of the Press” now means being free to say whatever Trump wants you to say. And your choices are now to either report everything in a Trump-friendly matter a-la North Korean state media, or report objective facts and risk criminal prosecution. And in a justice system littered with Trump cronies up and down the judicial system ready to tip the scales in his favor, you can’t be surprised that more and more people are simply trying to avoid the latter.
There’s a reason why some of the richest and most powerful people and corporations in the country have crumbled like a house of cards while barely putting up a fight. The reality of the situation is that no matter how much money, power, and influence you have, you cannot win a game that was rigged from the start. And in a federal justice system that starts with people like Aileen Cannon and ending with people like Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, these people know that the fix is already in.
I’d love to agree and say these people need to fight the good fight, but that implies a world where legal protections still exist and it’s at least something resembling a level playing field. But fighting a fight you literally cannot win isn’t bravery. It’s suicide, and I understand why people are choosing to go down the path that keeps their careers intact and keeps them out of jail while they hope for an opportunity in the future.