J. Ann Selzer — SPARQNOW

At-a-Glance

President and Owner of Selzer & Company, a polling firm with an A+ rating from FiveThirtyEight for accuracy.
Founded Selzer & Company in 1996.
Oversaw nearly all of The Des Moines Register's Iowa Polls from 1987 to 2024.
Earned a Ph.D. in Communication Theory and Research from the University of Iowa in 1984.

Biography

J. Ann Selzer, born in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1956, is an American political pollster and the president and owner of the Des Moines, Iowa-based polling firm Selzer & Company. She founded the company in 1996.

Her firm has been described as having a reputation for highly accurate polls by FiveThirtyEight, which also gave Selzer & Company a rare A+ grade for accuracy. However, Selzer's polls incorrectly predicted Democratic victories in Iowa for the presidential elections of 2004 and 2024.