Meet the VPAP Pundit
The VPAP Pundit likes backpacking, being outdoors, and exploring Virginia.
Oh, and he makes election prediction models for fun.
With an analytical approach – and some help from a friend – Spencer Lieb, a 19-year old second-year student at the University of Virginia, won the pundit crown. He beat 501 others in VPAP’s Pundit Contest, an election-prediction quiz.
As an intern at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the UVA Center for Politics, which provides nonpartisan political forecasting and analysis, and a vpap.org superfan, the Democrat from Norfolk foresaw a blue wave that was crucial to his victory.
“I didn't think any Democrats were losing” in the 13 races included in the contest.
Nearly all pundit hopefuls – 95% – guessed that Democrat Abigail Spanberger would win the election for Governor. But after the texting scandal that scrambled the Attorney General race in its final weeks, 52% predicted that Jason Miyares (R) would defeat Jay Jones (D) to win another term.
Spencer saw Jones eking out a win.
“I thought that Spanberger was going to do well enough that he would get pulled over the edge.”
He also navigated the competitive House of Delegates race in the 75th District, which spans Chesterfield and Prince George counties. 62% of contestants thought Republican incumbent Carrie Coyner would hold off the Democratic challenger, Lindsey Dougherty.
“That one was probably the toughest call,” Spencer said. “But I just felt like Democrats were going to do well.”
His final hurdle came from Wise County. Luckily, so did the source of his answer.
The ballot initiative there would have created a county-operated electric authority. But the Norfolk native didn’t know the ins and outs of the local debate.
What about a classmate that hails from the Clinch River Valley?
“I asked my friend Davis [Miller], who's from Wise County, if he knew anything about that one. I told him if I won, he would get some of the recognition.”
Davis said it was likely to fail, due to voters’ confusion about the potential electric authority.
85% of contestants predicted it would pass.
The scoop from Davis put Spencer neck-and-neck with three other finalists who shared a perfect score.
“I’m grateful,” Spencer said. “Good to have a friend from Wise County for this.”
It came down to the tiebreaker, which asked contestants to predict the percentage of the vote the winning candidate for Governor would receive.
Rather than randomly select a number for the answer, Spencer “wanted to have something that I thought was more analytical.”
He has modeled election outcomes for races across the country, at times getting it right “to the tenth of a percent”. He crunched the numbers again this time with a “sort of model”, “sort of polling average” that spit out 55.63%.
It was the closest to the 57.33% of the vote won by Spanberger at the time of judging.
The VPAP Pundit will continue honing his skills as he studies government and data science at UVA. Spencer hopes to one day visit all of Virginia’s cities and counties. So far, he’s been to 89 of the 133 – or 66.91%. You can bet he’s diligently tracking the data for each one.
Nov. 17, 2025
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