David Butler (academic)

Sir David Edgeworth Butler CBE, FBA (born 17 October 1924) is an English social scientist and psephologist, based in Oxford.

Butler was educated at St Paul's School and New College, Oxford, and then at Princeton University 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.

Between 1956 and 1957, he served as personal assistant to HM Ambassador in Washington.

Butler is the author of many publications, but perhaps his most important work is the Nuffield Election Studies of each United Kingdom General Election since 1945. Early co-authors included Richard Rose and Anthony King. From 1974 to 2005, this series was co-authored with Dennis Kavanagh. He was a prominent on-screen expert on the BBC's election night coverage from the 1950 election to the 1979 election, and was a co-inventor of the swingometer. He has since 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.

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