David Butler

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

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.

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.

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.

Personal life and death Butler was married to Professor Marilyn Butler (died March 2014), a 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 died of acute kidney failure at Sobell House hospice in Oxford, on 8 November 2022, aged 98, 3 weeks after his 98th birthday. 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.