He comes across as “fair and balanced”, but in the end, he is a wishy-washy employee of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Too close to DC, and too long in academia to be trusted. A country club moderate at best.
As a long time Virginian I have come to view Sabato and his ‘political studies center’ as the political arm of the University of Virginia. Seeing that his group is embedded in the University I realize that he is dependent upon it. UVA, as all of academia, gravitates to the Left; hence Saboto does not wander far from the Plantation of Conventional Wisdom.