American's vote for Eliot, initially, as literary prizewinner (5)
I believe the answer is:
yeats
'literary prizewinner' is the definition.
(WB Yeats won the Nobel Prize in Literature)
'american's vote for eliot initially' is the wordplay.
'american's vote' becomes 'yea' (affirmative vote in US politics).
'for' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'eliot initially' becomes 'ts' (initials of poet TS Eliot).
'yea'+'ts'='YEATS'
'as' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for yeats that I've seen before include "literary figure" , "Irish poet, 1923 Nobel Prize winner" , "he wrote" , "William Butler ..., great Irish poet" , "Irish poet and dramatist, d. 1939" .)