I'll concede that he does get more accurate the closer to election day it becomes. Maybe my old age memory problems are kicking in, but I seem to remember him (like a lot of other liberals out there) soft pedaling the bad news in February. Then as we get closer to election day and the outcome is pretty obvious to almost everyone, they get more realistic to maintain any creditability.
That's pretty much true across the board for the pollsters. Of course the Lib pollsters will hold off to the very last minute so we do have to be on guard.
OTOH, Sabato is semi-regular on Fox News so I'm willing to give him a pass at this point. We'll see how it goes. In any case, it's going to be an interesting and fun election season (for a change.)