Jennifer Agiesta

Jennifer Agiesta is Director of Polling and Election Analytics at CNN. Named to the position in January 2015, Agiesta leads the network’s polling team, which both conducts and reports on polling, and heads its Election Night Decision Desk. During her time at CNN, she has revamped and modernized CNN’s standards for reporting on polls and surveys and changed the way network conducts its own polls to lean on cutting-edge methodologies. She works out of CNN’s Washington DC bureau.

Agiesta is a recognized leader in survey research and public opinion. She serves as President of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, and collaborated with other leading researchers on AAPOR’s evaluation of 2020 pre-election polling.

Prior to joining CNN, Agiesta served as director of polling at The Associated Press. There, she ran a two-person polling unit, conducting domestic and international survey research for the news cooperative and leading its election night exit poll coverage. She has also covered polling at The Washington Post and helped build the National Election Pool exit poll operation at Edison Research. Prior to her media work, Agiesta worked on messaging research with DC firms Belden, Russonello and Stewart and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.

Agiesta holds a bachelors degree in politics and journalism from Washington and Lee University, and is a native of Long Island, New York.