David Scott is a vice president and managing editor at The Associated Press, where he is responsible for the operations of the news agency’s global newsroom. Scott also oversees AP’s public opinion research team and election decision desk, and coordinates AP’s overall coverage of U.S. elections – from the vote count that tells the world who won to the AP VoteCast election survey that explains the reasons why.
Scott joined AP as a reporter in St. Louis in 1999, where he covered the downfall of Trans World Airlines and the rise of Monsanto. Later, in North Carolina as news editor, Scott led the AP’s coverage of the Duke lacrosse rape case and the political career of John Edwards. He also set up and directed the AP’s Blacksburg, Va., newsroom following the Virginia Tech shootings, and served as an on-site editor during several hurricanes, including Katrina, Ike and Gustav.
In 2009, he was named the AP’s first regional editor for the Central U.S. In that role, he led the cooperative’s journalism in 14 middle American states and oversaw its Chicago-based publishing center. During his five-year tenure, the region’s journalists won three APME Deadline Reporting Awards and an honorable mention in a fourth year.
Scott served as AP’s political editor for the 2014 and 2016 U.S. elections, directing coverage of campaigns and American politics from Washington. In that role, he joined the AP-NORC Center team and began his work with AP’s polling unit. In 2018, he was part of the team that created AP VoteCast, the news cooperative’s replacement for the legacy exit poll, and shepherded its introduction into the market and AP’s own newsroom as the indispensable Election Day storytelling tool.
Scott is a native of Philadelphia who grew up in Milwaukee and is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. He lives in Portland, Maine.