GARY M. SEGURA, PH.D.
Founding Partner & President
Gary Segura, Ph.D., is President and co-founder of BSP Research, and formerly was the co-founder of the research firm Latino Decisions. Gary holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and is currently the Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and holds faculty appointments in Public Policy, Chicana/o Studies and Political Science.
Over the last 20 years, he has directed polling research that has completed over 150,000 interviews of Americans of all backgrounds on matters of political importance. He has briefed members of both the House and Senate as well as senior administration officials and appeared on National Public Radio, the “News Hour,” “Frontline,” “the CBS Evening News,” MSNBC, and numerous other outlets.
In 2020 Gary directed Latino polling and focus group research for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and his research was credited with informing critical Latino mobilization efforts in 2020. He also oversaw numerous state and national polls for Univision News that had statewide samples of the full electorate with Latino oversamples. Time Magazine called Segura's work the “gold-standard in Latino American polling."
Segura has twice directed Latino polling for U.S. Senate races in Nevada, part of the teams that elected Catherine Cortez-Masto in 2016 and Jackie Rosen in 2018. In 2010, his research predicted a surprise win by then majority-leader Senator Harry Reid when most mainstream polls saw Reid losing. However, Segura's research demonstrated that most other polls were ignoring the fast-growing Latino and immigrant electorate which had been inspired to vote for Reid because of his championing the DREAM Act.
Segura served as an expert witness on the nature of political power in all three of landmark LGBT marriage rights cases in 2013 and 2015, Windsor v. United States, Hollingsworth v Perry, and the historic Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized marriage equality as a constitutionally protected right. He has provided expert testimony on discrimination in both voting rights cases and LGBT civil rights cases, and filed amicus curiae briefs on subjects as diverse as marriage equality and affirmative action.
Segura was one of the principal investigators of both the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, and was one of the principal investigators of the Latino National Survey, in 2006.
He is a past president of the Midwest Political Science Association and the Western Political Science Association, and a past executive council member of the American Political Science Association. He is a past president of El Sector Latino de la Ciencia Política (Latino Caucus in Political Science). In 2010, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Contact:
206-280-5069