Emily Swanson

Emily Swanson is director of public opinion research at the Associated Press, where she directs AP's polling team and election night decision desk. The decision desk analyzes vote returns, historical data, and the results of AP VoteCast, AP’s pioneering election research survey, to determine when AP officially calls the winner in elections all across the country and explains to the world how we know. Swanson played a key part in the development of AP VoteCast. She also oversees polls conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Swanson helped develop updated polling standards published in the 2018 AP Stylebook, which included the guidance that “poll results that seek to preview the outcome of an election must never be the lead, headline or single subject of any story.”