Father of modern election science, Sir David Butler, dies at 98

Sir David Butler (right) is pictured with the BBC’s 1974 election team. Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty Images

Sir David Butler, the father of modern election science whose career spanned more than 70 years, has died at the aged of 98.

Butler’s friend and biographer, the journalist Michael Crick, paid tribute to him as the “father of psephology” – a word that Butler promoted early in his career to describe “the new study of election science based on the Greek word psephos for pebble which the ancient Greeks used to vote in elections”.