David Butler (psephologist)

Butler died of renal failure on 8 November 2022, at the age of 98.

(Subsequent editions since the 11th edition in 2018 have been edited by Roger Mortimore and Andrew Blick, and have been renamed 'Butler's British Political Facts.')

Butler was married to Professor Marilyn Butler (died March 2014), a former rector of Exeter College, Oxford, the first woman to head a previously all-male college. They had three sons. Butler lived in Oxford. The Conservative politician Rab Butler was his cousin.

Butler was an Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1994. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1991 Queen's Birthday Honours List and knighted in the 2011 New Years Honours List for services to political science. Butler was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex in 1993.

(Butler was also the founding co-Editor of the peer-reviewed academic journal 'Electoral Studies', from 1982 to 1992.)

After 1973, Butler was involved in founding and organising the Oxford University Australian Politics Lunch, which "has only one rule, you are not allowed to talk about anything except Australian politics." Notable lunch attendees included the Australian Leader of the Opposition Kim Beazley.

His book, Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping Electoral Choice (Macmillan, 1969), written with US political scientist Donald E. Stokes, brought modern American science treatments to the United Kingdom. His Governing Without a Majority: Dilemmas for Hung Parliaments in Britain (Sheridan House, 1986) provides an analysis of the phenomenon of the hung parliament in Britain. He sat on the editorial board of the academic journal Representation.

(Butler also anonymously wrote various analytical chapters of the 'Times Guide to the House of Commons' series from the 1960s to the 1980s.)

Between 1956 and 1957, Butler served as personal assistant to the British Ambassador to the United States.

Born in London, Butler was educated at St Paul's School and New College, Oxford, and then at Princeton University as a Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow from 1947 to 1948. He returned to Oxford as a researcher and academic at Nuffield College, where he taught throughout the remainder of his academic career.

Butler was the author of many publications, but his most notable work is the series of Nuffield Election Studies which covers every United Kingdom General Election since 1945. Early co-authors included Richard Rose and Anthony King. From 1974 to 2005, the series was co-authored with Dennis Kavanagh. Butler was a commentator on the BBC's election night coverage from the 1950 election to the 1979 election, and was a co-inventor of the swingometer. He later appeared as an electoral analyst on various television and radio programmes, including for ITV on the night of the 1997 general election, and Sky News election night coverage in 2001. He also appeared as a guest on the BBC's coverage of both the 2010 and 2015 general elections.

Sir David Edgeworth Butler, CBE, FBA (17 October 1924 – 8 November 2022) was an English political scientist, with a special interest in elections.