Professor Anthony King, one of Britain’s leading psephologists, dies at the age of 82
Prof Anthony King being awarded, alongside Prof Ivor Crewe, the 2014 Practical Politics Book of the Year award
Professor Anthony King, one of Britain’s leading political scientists, has died at the age of 82. He’s perhaps best known for his appearances on election results programmes and his lucid analysis. From 1983 – 2005, he was BBC TV analyst on General Election nights. Also, every month for many years, he was the main commentator on political opinion polls for The Daily Telegraph.
He wrote many books on politics and was co-editor of the Britain at the Polls series of essays and, in 2008, The British Constitution.
King was co-author with David Butler of the Nuffield College election studies for the 1964 and 1966 and wrote Britain Says Yes: the 1975 Referendum on the Common Market.
Many of his later works were co-authored with his then University of Essex colleague, Prof Ivor Crewe.
I met him once at an Oxford dinner shortly after I had founded PB in 2004 and we talked about the creation of the site. He was a great communicator with a wonderful ability to make politics relevant to audiences other than political geeks.
He’ll be missed.