Larry Sabato (born August 7, 1952, Norfolk, Virginia, U.S.) is an American political scientist known for his commentary on U.S. elections. Sabato was the founder and director of the University of Virginia’s nonpartisan Center for Politics.
He attended the University of Virginia, where he received a B.A. (1974) in government. Sabato also studied public policy at Princeton University for a year before completing a doctorate (1977) in politics at Queen’s College, Oxford, as a Rhodes scholar. He joined the faculty at the University of Virginia in 1978.
Sabato’s many books and essays focus on the American political system, especially national and state elections. The Rise of Political Consultants: New Ways of Winning Elections (1981) describes the emergence of a new class of professional political strategists, media specialists, fund-raisers, and pollsters and analyzes its impact on American politics. In Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics (1991), Sabato criticized what he described as the media’s increasing focus on unflattering stories from the personal lives of politicians and candidates, corresponding to reduced coverage of serious political issues. In A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country (2007), he argued that outmoded provisions of the U.S. Constitution are partly to blame for dysfunction in American politics. He appeared regularly as a political expert on U.S. news programs. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an election-analysis Web site, was acclaimed for Sabato’s predictions of election results.