The British General Elections of 1979

Nuffield Election Studies #11

by David Edgeworth Butler, Dennis Kavanagh

Genres: History

443 pages, Hardcover

Published December 1, 1980

About the author

Sir David Edgeworth Butler, CBE, FBA was an English political scientist who made a major contribution to the study of UK elections, particularly through the series of Nuffield Election Studies which has covered every UK general election since 1945. Butler was a commentator on the BBC's election night coverage from 1950 to 1979 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.

[with thanks to Wikipedia]

Reviews

[Andres Cordoba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a pretty standard addition to the series. Well written all the way through, though the positivity to Labour's prospects going into the next decade seem hilarious in retrospect. No shame to the authors though, this is well written and showed the surprisingly proximity Labour had to either winning an earlier election or preventing a definitive stronghold of Conservative power through their own brand of populism.