Ann Selzer

Jane Ann Selzer (born 1956) is an American political pollster and the president of the Des Moines, Iowa-based polling firm Selzer & Company, which she founded in 1996. She was described as "the best pollster in politics" by Clare Malone of FiveThirtyEight, which also gave Selzer & Company a rare A+ grade for accuracy.

Her polls of Iowa voters had a reputation for being highly accurate, based on their performance in elections from 2008 through 2020. However, Selzer's polls incorrectly predicted Democratic victories in Iowa for the presidential elections of 2004 and 2024, with the latter underestimating Republican Donald Trump by sixteen points. She announced her retirement from the election polling part of her practice shortly after the 2024 election, announcing that she will focus on future endeavors in other parts of her business.

Early life Selzer was born in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1956, the middle child in a family of five. She was raised in Topeka, Kansas. Selzer attended the University of Kansas, initially as a pre-med student, but eventually lost interest in medicine. She then earned a Ph.D. in Communication Theory and Research from the University of Iowa in 1984.

Career After graduation, Selzer worked for The Des Moines Register. She established her own polling firm, Selzer & Company, in 1996. She worked as the pollster for the Register for many years, and oversaw nearly all of the Registers Iowa Polls from 1987 to 2024, according to FiveThirtyEight. She has also done polling work for numerous other news organizations, including the Detroit Free Press and the Indianapolis Star.

Polling methodology Selzer's polls utilize random sampling through random digit dialing in a dual-frame design with both landlines and cell phones. The sampling frame for her political polls of likely caucusgoers typically consist of lists of registered voters. and her poll of the 2014 United States Senate election in Iowa also mirrored the actual result exceptionally closely.

Selzer & Co. conducted their final 2016 presidential poll in Iowa in early November, showing Donald Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton by seven percentage points. Most other polls at the time showed a much closer race. Trump won Iowa by 9.4 percentage points. Selzer's final Iowa poll ahead of the 2020 presidential election showed Trump ahead of Joe Biden by seven percentage points, and Republican Senator Joni Ernst ahead of Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield by four percentage points. This was the only poll conducted in fall 2020 to show Trump ahead by more than two points, while Ernst's race was considered a toss-up. Trump won Iowa by 8.2 percentage points, while Ernst was re-elected by 6.6 points. In a post-election interview with Bloomberg, Selzer suggested that her polls' consistently high performance may be related to making fewer assumptions about the electorate, saying "I assumed nothing. My data told me."

2024 presidential election Prior to the 2024 United States presidential election, Selzer & Co. released their final Iowa poll that had Kamala Harris leading Trump 47% to 44% in the state, markedly different from other polls that showed Trump with a significant lead. The poll was leaked ahead of its embargo, with Governor J. B. Pritzker of Illinois publicly discussing its results at least 45 minutes before its scheduled release. Trump criticized the accuracy of the poll. Selzer responded by saying the poll used the same methodology as in 2016 and 2020, and that, "It would not be in my best interest, or that of my clients—The Des Moines Register and Mediacom—to conjure fake numbers."

Contrary to the poll, Trump won Iowa by a 13-point margin; the error of roughly 16 percentage points was by far the largest of any of Selzer's polls. She pledged to review the data to see if she could explain the significant polling error. FiveThirtyEight hypothesized that Selzer's methodology, which declines to weight for educational attainment and partisan identification, may have led to the divergent result. On November 17, 2024, Selzer announced her retirement from electoral polling, saying she had planned to do so before the 2024 election. On December 16, Trump said he would sue Selzer and the Des Moines Register, saying their poll "was fraud, and it was election interference." Trump filed the threatened lawsuit against Selzer on December 16, 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. On January 7, 2025, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) announced that it would defend Selzer in the lawsuit, calling the lawsuit "the very definition of a 'SLAPP' suit — a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation." On February 21, FIRE asked the Court to dismiss the suit, writing "'allegations about polls and news stories [the plaintiffs] dislike have nothing to do with fraud' and that Selzer's polling was protected under the First Amendment.

On January 8, 2025, the Center for American Rights, filed a class action lawsuit in Polk County District Court on behalf of West Des Moines resident Dennis Donnelly and other Des Moines Register subscribers. The lawsuit alleges that Selzer and the paper defrauded the readers under Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act by knowingly publishing inaccurate poll results.

Final pre-election Selzer & Company polls Election Democraticcandidate PollD % ActualD % Republicancandidate PollR % ActualR % Pollmargin Actualmargin Error 1996 IA president Bill Clinton 46 50.3 Bob Dole 35 40.0 D+11 D+10.4 D+0.6 1996 IA U.S. Senate Tom Harkin 46 51.8 Jim Lightfoot 38 46.7 D+8 D+5.1 D+2.9 2000 IA president Al Gore 44 48.6 George W. Bush 42 48.3 D+2 D+0.3 D+1.7 2008 MI U.S. Senate Carl Levin 53 62.7 Jack Hoogendyk 32 33.9 D+21 D+28.8 R+7.8 2012 IA president Barack Obama 47 52.2 Mitt Romney 42 46.4 D+5 D+5.8 R+0.8 2014 IA U.S. Senate Bruce Braley 44 43.8 Joni Ernst 51 52.2 R+7 R+8.4 D+1.4 2014 IA governor Jack Hatch 35 37.3 Terry Branstad 59 59.1 R+24 R+21.7 R+2.3 2016 U.S. president Hillary Clinton 46 48.5 Donald Trump 43 46.4 D+3 D+2.1 D+0.9 2016 FL president Hillary Clinton 45 47.8 Donald Trump 46 49.0 R+1 R+1.2 D+0.2 2016 FL U.S. Senate Patrick Murphy 41 44.3 Marco Rubio 51 52.0 R+10 R+7.7 R+2.3 2016 IA U.S. Senate Patty Judge 33 35.7 Chuck Grassley 56 60.2 R+23 R+24.5 D+1.5 2018 IA governor Fred Hubbell 46 47.5 Kim Reynolds 44 50.3 D+2 R+2.7 D+4.7 2020 IA president Joe Biden 41 45.0 Donald Trump 48 53.2 R+7 R+8.2 D+1.2 2020 IA U.S. Senate Theresa Greenfield 42 45.2 Joni Ernst 46 51.8 R+4 R+6.6 D+2.6 2022 IA U.S. Senate Michael Franken 41 43.9 Chuck Grassley 53 56.1 R+12 R+12.2 D+0.2 2022 IA governor Deidre DeJear 37 39.6 Kim Reynolds 54 58.1 R+17 R+18.5 D+1.5 2024 IA president Kamala Harris 47 42.7 Donald Trump 44 55.9 D+3 R+13.2 D+16.2