The American Political Science Association (APSA) will present the Carey McWilliams Award to Ariel Edwards Levy at the 2019 APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition, the world’s largest gathering of political scientists and source for emerging scholarship in the discipline. The $750 award recognizes major journalistic contributions to the understanding of politics.
Ariel Edwards-Levy is the polling editor and a staff reporter at HuffPost, where she covers politics and public opinion. She runs HuffPost’s partnership with the polling firm YouGov, fielding daily surveys with a focus on how Americans consume the news and react to current events. She also writes about the changing polling industry. Previously, she worked as HuffPost’s associate polling editor during the 2012 and 2014 elections, tracking the polling on races across the country and co-writing the HuffPost Pollster newsletter. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California.
Here is what the Award Committee had to say about their decision:
Ariel Edwards-Levy ‘s reporting has included topics like “Not All Democratic Voters are Looking for the Next Obama,” and “Undecided Is Still the Real Democratic Frontrunner.” Her smart use of polling data is evident both in her reporting and on her lively Twitter account. A nomination letter on her behalf notes that Edwards-Levy “issues an important caveat to runaway horse race journalism with sober reminders about what polls can and cannot tell us” and describes her as “one of the few voices of reason in an otherwise poll-crazy world of political journalism.”
The committee finds Edwards-Levy’s work timely and important and richly deserving of the Carey McWilliams award. Edwards-Levy has already distinguished herself as the kind of scholar this award was designed to recognize, whose work illumines general principles of the social and political sciences and exhibits intellectual forthrightness and political independence.
APSA could not reward achievement in political science without the generous donations we receive from members and friends. Your gift today will help APSA continue recognizing outstanding scholarship for years to come. To contribute to the Carey McWilliams Award fund, please visit apsanet.org/donate-now.
