Meet the VPAP Pundit
Jacob Long, a 17-year-old Republican from Virginia Beach, will be able to vote for the first time in November.
But he’s already achieved a feat that eludes the most seasoned politicos: the VPAP Pundit Crown.
The rising senior at Princess Anne High School bested more than 700 contestants to become the youngest winner since the VPAP Pundit contest began in 2011.
Despite his age, Jacob is an old hand in local politics.
As a military kid, he moved to Virginia Beach from South Carolina, where his grandparents raised “chickens, goats, the whole nine yards.” By age 12, he began to miss the animals.
“I would like some chickens,” he remembered thinking. “And then I looked, and they were illegal.”
Jacob began researching the candidates for City Council and asking their stances on backyard hens, an issue that was being hotly debated in localities across Virginia.
“Eventually after this, I did start looking at their other platforms too – it's not just like, ‘Do you like chickens, or no?’ – but it just kind of blossomed from there.”
He soon discovered vpap.org and used it to find candidates, district maps and see the impacts of redistricting.
Now, Jacob is ruling the roost. He was one of 11 contestants who correctly guessed 20 out of 24 primary outcomes.
His hometown knowledge helped him navigate the Republican primary in Senate District 19, where Christie Craig won the nomination. 57% of pundit contestants picked former Delegate Tim Anderson (R-Virginia Beach).
Jacob was Anderson’s former constituent in Virginia Beach. In SD 19, Anderson “had to introduce himself to an entirely new voting group, and Chesapeake’s the larger part of the district,” said Jacob “I went with Christie Craig because I figured she was on the School Board for a while and people in Chesapeake knew her.”
He also predicted that Stella Pekarsky would upset Sen. George Barker (D-Clifton), which 67% of contestants missed.
That was “kind of a gamble, in my opinion,” he said, but Barker “was basically running in more new territory than her.”
One question stumped nearly everyone – including Jacob. Only 4% guessed that Timmy French would win the 8-way contest for the Republican nomination in Senate District 1.
“I was very surprised by that one on election night,” Jacob said, who had expected John Massoud to win. As the Chair of the Sixth Congressional District Republican Committee, “he had – well at least I thought – more connections to the actual Senate district than [Del. Dave] LaRock did. But it was between them in my guesses and clearly neither of those was correct."
The Pundit contest came down to the tie-breaker questions. None of the 11 finalists correctly guessed that only six out of the 11 State Senate incumbents running would survive their primaries.
Jacob won the crown with his answer to the second tiebreaker: In the three-way GOP primary in Senate District 12, what percentage of the vote will the winning candidate receive?
His guess – 38.7% – was less than one percent shy of the 39.5% that Glen Sturtevant had over Sen. Amanda Chase (R-Midlothian) and Tina Ramirez.
“With the anti-Chase vote being split between the two, I knew nobody was going to get a very high percentage, because all three were well-funded and serious candidates. So nobody was going to get like, 2%. I knew they were all going to get a significant amount of the vote share.”
Jacob will enjoy his reign during his summer vacation – until he starts practice for marching band, where he is the Field Captain and plays the tuba.
As for his dream of owning chickens?
“They’re still illegal, but I'm still working on it all these years later, still looking at the council candidates,” Jacob said. “They've got so many emails from me they probably blocked me. I'm still trying.”
July 1, 2023
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