Government | Politics 2023: LARRY J. SABATO

DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS; ROBERT KENT GOOCH PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, CHARLOTTESVILLE

Published August 30, 2023 by Virginia Business

A Norfolk native and University of Virginia stalwart with a national profile as a political commentator, Sabato founded and leads the 25-year-old U.Va. Center for Politics. His Crystal Ball newsletter, which handicaps political races, had a 99% accuracy rate in 2004 and was up in the high 90s at other times, although Sabato had to issue a “mea culpa” in 2016 after predicting a Hillary Clinton presidential win.

Sabato is a fierce critic of President Donald Trump and spoke out about the 2017 white supremacist march through U.Va.’s Grounds, which he witnessed firsthand. “Of my 47 years here, it was the worst night ever on the Lawn,” he wrote to the university’s president.

A New York Times bestselling author and four-time Emmy winner, Sabato was a Rhodes scholar who holds degrees from U.Va. and Oxford and received U.Va.’s highest faculty honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award. Sabato also chairs the advisory board for U.Va.’s Karsh Institute of Democracy.

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