While a longtime resident of the Hawkeye State, Selzer was born a few states over in Kansas.

While she may have seemed destined for life as a pollster — by conducting a survey of “neighborhood moms” at age five, according to the Wall Street Journal — she took a pre-med course at the University of Kansas before finding her heart in data .

She entered a communication theory and research program at the University of Iowa, followed by an academic fellowship in the UK and a visit to Capitol Hill, then returned permanently stateside.

While at the Des Moines Register in 1987, Selzer dug through the paper’s polling data and questioned its conclusion that George HW Bush would beat Bob Dole in the Republican caucuses.

“I think the Register is publishing that George Bush is going to win the caucus, and I don’t think that’s true,” she told her editor. The Register changed its prediction to Dole — correctly — while Bush came in third.

Selzer keeps prejudice out of the equation

Selzer, who still conducts the registry’s polls after leaving the newspaper in 1994 to start a private company, samples voters from the lists of registered voters and does not weight his results by past voting habits.

Most importantly, she keeps her prejudices out of the equation and doesn’t care who wins or loses—as long as she’s right.

“I like to say, ‘keep your dirty hands off your data,'” she told FiveThirtyEight.

“It’s making assumptions about what is or isn’t going to happen and then deciding that you’re going to discount the minority votes because you don’t think they’re going to show up.”

The approach has proven successful and elevated her to one of the most respected and accurate pollsters in America.