Scholar and broadcaster

Born: November 17, 1934;

Died: January 12, 2017

PROFESSOR Anthony King, who has died aged 82, was a scholar familiar to television audiences through his frequent appearances analysing election results and opinion polls.

A Canadian-born professor of politics, Professor King developed the art and science of psephology – examining elections by drawing upon previous results, polls, boundary changes and other data to predict or interpret their outcomes.

Tony King’s genial manner, unflappability and sense of humour made him a natural for broadcasting, but his primary strength was the breadth and depth of his knowledge. Sheer longevity, as well as his academic prowess, meant that he was seldom at a loss for a comparison or a parallel – he had usually seen it before, and if not, could tell you what made it unprecedented.

A notable example came in May 1997, when exit polls suggested the scale of Tony Blair’s victory before any results had come in. David Dimbleby, hosting the programme, suggested that it looked like a Labour landslide. King thought this well-worn metaphor inadequate.

“Landslide’s much too weak a word … it’s an asteroid hitting the planet, wiping out practically all life on earth as we know it,” he declared. “Nothing like it since the Second World War … possibly nothing like it this century.” Warming to his theme, he pointed out that it was not merely that Labour was doing well, but that the Tories were faring “horrendously”. It was, he thought (accurately, as it turned out) going to be “their worst night, possibly, since the Great Reform Act of 1832”.

Anthony Stephen King was born on November 17, 1934 in Toronto; his father Harold was an art teacher and his mother Marjorie a librarian. Both were interested in politics and Professor King remembered friends coming round on Saturday evenings “to drink beer and talk over the issues of the day”.

After taking a First in History at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, he came to Magdalen College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, where he took another First, this time in PPE. He went on to Nuffield, and then back to Magdalen as a Fellow, while producing his doctoral thesis on the (British) Liberal Party from 1906-1914. In 1962-63, he spent a year at Columbia, New York, before becoming a senior lecturer at Oxford in 1966. That year he also appeared, with David Butler (with whom he wrote Nuffield Studies of the 1964 and 1966 elections), for the first time as an expert on the BBC’s election coverage.

But, tiring of the atmosphere at Oxford, he jumped at the chance to join the University of Essex, then just four years old, to set up and run its school of government. He became reader there in 1968 and Professor of Government the following year, and never really retired from the role.

Professor King firmly held that research and teaching were complementary roles for a scholar, and held weekly brainstorming sessions for his students on a Wednesday. He also taught the introductory first-year course, where his students benefited from his direct knowledge of, and frequently acquaintance with, Britain’s post-war politicians. Some later became politicians themselves (in private, Professor King was scathing on the intellectual ability of John Bercow, now Speaker of the Commons).

In 1969, he published The British Prime Minister and co-founded the British Journal of Political Science. Most subsequent books were analyses of elections (including the 1976 EEC referendum), but he also wrote The New American Political System (1978) and, with Ivor Crewe in 1995, an account, from foundation to collapse, of the SDP.

Professor King had close knowledge of the subject: he had been called in to give advice to moderate Labour MPs in 1980, and his analysis encouraged some to think there was room for a third centrist party (the Liberals were at a political low point, though King advised that any new party should find common cause with them).

He had also been romantically linked with Shirley Williams, one of the original “Gang of Four”, during the 1970s. Professor King’s first wife Vera, whom he married in 1965, died in 1971; he and Shirley Williams planned marriage in the mid-1970s, but she wanted to obtain an annulment from the Vatican. By the time she got it, however, Professor King had spent a year away teaching at Stanford, and the relationship fizzled out. In 1980, he married Jan Reece, a colleague at Essex.

In 1983, Professor King began presenting A Week in Politics on Channel 4, and the next year began writing for The Daily Telegraph. For many years he analysed the paper’s monthly opinion polls. King made occasional visits to editorial conference, a boisterous affair held after lunch. There he would watch with guarded amusement as the editor Charles Moore attempted to restrain leader writers as emphatic in their opinions as they were reluctant actually to write them up.

Professor King was exceptionally good company, with a keen sense of humour. He relished the company of journalists and politicians who shared his interest in the minutiae of politics, but professionally kept his opinions to himself – though it was generally assumed he was a centrist, perhaps veering slightly to the Left.

Tony King served on various committees and public bodies, including the Nolan Committee on standards in public life, an RSA commission on drugs and the committee set up in 1999 on reform of the House of Lords. His great interest away from politics was music, particularly opera. He is survived by his wife, Jan.

ANDREW MCKIE