Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the Iowa Poll published by the Des Moines Register three days before the November 2024 election was rejected by a Polk County District Court on Wednesday afternoon. The poll, conducted by Selzer & Co., showed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, leading Trump by 3 percentage points among likely voters in Iowa.
Within hours, Trump denounced the poll as “fake” and “corrupt,” and said polls like it “should be illegal,” claims he repeated at rallies in the final days of the 2024 campaign. Trump, of course, won Iowa in 2024 in a landslide. He carried 94 of Iowa’s 99 counties, and his margin of victory — 13 percentage points — was larger than his margins of victory in 2016 and 2020.
The poll was a rare miss for J. Ann Selzer, who had conducted the Iowa Poll since 1997 and earned a reputation as one of the best state-level political pollsters in the country. She attracted national attention for her willingness to publish polls that were outliers but accurately reflected the political reality in Iowa. Selzer & Co.’s final poll of Democrats in the 2008 Iowa Caucus showed Barack Obama winning handily, something others missed. She also accurately predicted both of Donald Trump’s previous Iowa victories. The previous Iowa Polls showed Trump beating Harris, and before Harris, Joe Biden.
At the end of December 2024, then-President-elect Trump filed a lawsuit against J. Ann Selzer, her polling firm Selzer & Co., the Des Moines Register and its parent company Gannett, claiming the Nov. 2, 2024 Iowa Poll wasn’t just wrong, it was a deliberate attempt to interfere in the election and a violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.
“At its core, the plaintiffs’ petition seeks 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,” Judge Scott Beattie wrote in his 64-page ruling on Wednesday. “After considering the parties’ arguments, the court must conclude that the protection is too great and the reach is too far. The case must therefore be dismissed.”
Beattie dismissed the lawsuit “with prejudice,” meaning that Trump and his co-plaintiffs, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and former state senator Brad Zaun, cannot file a new lawsuit based on the claims in this one.
Trump originally filed his lawsuit in state court, but attorneys for Gannett succeeded in having the case removed to federal court. Since Trump doesn’t live in Iowa and didn’t when the alleged harm created by the erroneous poll occurred — the original filing describes him as “a resident of Florida” — it concerned differing jurisdictions, making it a federal matter.
In an attempt to have the case returned to state court, Trump filed an amended complaint in January 2025, after he was sworn-in as president, and added Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and former state senator Brad Zaun as plaintiffs. The two Iowa Republicans claimed they too have been injured by that Iowa Poll in a way that violated the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.
Miller-Meeks was not mentioned in the poll Trump was suing over, and, of course, won her 2024 race. Zaun was the only incumbent Republican in the Iowa Legislature to lose his seat in 2024, but no Iowa Poll was conducted in his race. In March 2025, Zaun was hired by the Trump administration as the Small Business Administration director for the region that covers Iowa.
U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger denied Trump’s request to amend his complaint and dismissed the addition of Miller-Meeks and Zaun as an attempt to game the system.
“Plaintiffs provide no legitimate rationale for Zaun and Miller-Meeks to join a federal lawsuit only to immediately move to remand,” Ebinger said in her May 2025 decision. “Zaun and Miller-Meeks could have sued defendants in state court without fear of removal [to federal court]. Thus, the only apparent reason to have joined Trump’s lawsuit is to destroy diversity jurisdiction.”
Trump, Miller-Meeks and Zaun appealed Ebinger’s decision to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. On June 30, while that appeal was still pending before the 8th Circuit, Trump filed a motion to withdraw his federal lawsuit. That same day, Trump filed a new version of his lawsuit in Polk County District Court. Unlike his first complaint filed in Polk County District Court in December, the filing included Miller-Meeks and Zaun to establish the Iowa state court jurisdiction.
June 30 was an important deadline for Trump. It was the final day he could sue in state court, and not have it potentially dismissed under Iowa’s new anti-SLAPP law, which went into effect on July 1.
SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation, meaning lawsuits of little or no merit designed to harass a person or organization in order to stop or discourage them from speaking out on a public issue.
Trump attempted to appeal Ebinger’s decision, but his appeal was rejected by the 8th Circuit.
Trump then filed a motion for a writ of mandamus, asking the 8th Circuit to order Ebinger to let him withdraw his case. A writ of mandamus is usually only granted in extreme cases when no other form of appeal is available. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “Mandamus is an extraordinary remedy, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance.”
In a 2-1 split decision the 8th Circuit ruled that since the appeals court had not yet formally accepted Trump’s appeal when filed his motion to withdraw, Ebinger had erred in her refusal to dismiss the case. The October 2025 decision cleared the way for Trump, Miller-Meeks and Zaun to move forward with their state-level lawsuit.
In his ruling on Wednesday, Judge Beattie wrote, “This suit involves speech on a matter of public interest and concern, and allowing a legally faulty claim like this to proceed carries a cost that an ordinary case does not, because defending it can discourage others from reporting on and debating public affairs.”
The judge rejected Trump, Miller-Meeks and Zaun’s claim that “the Iowa Poll is a product” rather than a piece of journalism that is protected by the First Amendment.
“Simply labeling the poll a product does not change the analysis,” he wrote.
“This was never about ‘consumer fraud,’ the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) said in a news release after the decision was handed down. “Nor was it about winning in court. Trump’s lawsuit was about intimidating perceived critics into silence by making them waste time and money on lawyers to defend perfectly legal speech.”
FIRE represented Selzer pro bono in the case.
Gannett struck the same note in its statement.
“We are gratified that the court recognized what this meritless lawsuit sought to obscure: that claims of ‘fake news’ are little more than an attempt to punish news outlets for coverage those in power do not like,” Polly Grunfeld Sack, USA TODAY Co. chief legal counsel, said.
Attorneys for Trump, Miller-Meeks — who is currently running for reelection in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District — and Trump administration employee Zaun have not yet said if they plan to appeal.
Last November, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa dismissed a second lawsuit over the November 2024 Iowa Poll. The lawsuit, filed by a Trump supporter from West Des Moines the week after Trump first filed his, also claimed conducting the poll and publishing it violated the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, and demanded $2,799,600 in actual damages plus punitive damages.
The federal judge handling the case dismissed it with prejudice.
