Ann Selzer

J. Ann Selzer is an American political pollster who is the president of the Des Moines, Iowa-based polling firm Selzer & Company, which she founded in 1994.[1][2] She is known for her polls of Iowa voters, which have a reputation for being highly accurate.[3][4]

Ann Selzer
Born	1957 Rochester, Minnesota, U.S.
Alma mater	University of Kansas (BA) University of Iowa (PhD)
Occupation	Pollster
Home town	Topeka, Kansas, U.S.

Early life and education

Selzer was born in Rochester, Minnesota in 1957, the middle child in a family of five.[5] She was raised in Topeka, Kansas. Selzer attended the University of Kansas, initially as a pre-med student, but eventually lost interest in medicine.[6] She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Speech and Dramatics Arts in 1978.[7] She then earned a Ph.D in Communication Theory and Research from the University of Iowa in 1984.[8]

Career

After college, Selzer worked for The Des Moines Register. She established her own polling firm, Selzer & Company, in 1994.

Selzer was the only pollster to correctly predict Barack Obama's comfortable victory in the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucuses,[9] and her poll of the 2014 United States Senate election in Iowa also mirrored the actual result exceptionally closely.[10] She has worked as the pollster for the Des Moines Register for many years, and has "overseen nearly every one of the Register’s Iowa Polls since 1987", according to FiveThirtyEight. She has also done polling work for numerous other news organizations, including the Boston Globe and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.[9][6] In 2016, she was dubbed "the best pollster in politics" by Clare Malone of FiveThirtyEight, which also gave Selzer & Company a rare A+ grade for accuracy.[6][2]

As of January 2016, she works out of an office in West Des Moines, Iowa.[6]

References

1. Reuters (2019-06-08). "Biden Still Leads in 2020 Iowa Poll, Three Others Fight for Second". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-06-09.
2. "Grinnell College National Poll Leadership". Grinnell College. Retrieved 2019-06-09.
3. Shepard, Steven (2015-12-12). "Ann Selzer's secret sauce". Politico. Retrieved 2019-06-09.
4. Kaplan, Rebecca (2015-12-14). "Donald Trump goes to war with Iowa's top pollster". CBS News. Retrieved 2019-06-09.
5. Winkler, Elizabeth (2020-01-04). "J. Ann Selzer: The Pollster to Follow as Iowa Looms". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2020-01-04.
6. Malone, Clare (2016-01-27). "Ann Selzer Is The Best Pollster In Politics". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved 2019-06-09.
7. "Alumni Q&A with J. Ann Selzer, political pollster – KU College Stories". Retrieved 2020-02-03.
8. Selzer, J. Ann (1984). The gender gap: Social evolution and social revolution (Ph.D. thesis). University of Iowa.
9. Ball, Molly (2011-11-25). "Friday Interview: The Polling Guru of the Iowa Caucuses". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2019-06-09.
10. Cohn, Nate (2016-01-30). "Why This Is the Iowa Poll That Everyone Was Waiting For". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-06-09.

Further reading

• "2011 Women Business Owner of the Year: J. Ann Selzer". Business Record. July 29, 2011. Retrieved August 4, 2019.
• Chalian, David (December 31, 2011). "Ann Selzer, queen of the Iowa caucuses: For a day, the most powerful woman in American politics". The Ticket. Retrieved August 4, 2019.
• Lee, Deron (November 17, 2015). "Iowa's Ann Selzer on what journalists need to know about polling". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved August 4, 2019.
• Prokop, Andrew (January 30, 2016). "The most respected Iowa pollster's final caucus poll is out. Here's what it says". Vox. Retrieved August 4, 2019.