Monmouth University is reportedly planning to close its polling institute that focused on both New Jersey politics and national contests.
In recent years, university administrators have weighed whether it was worth it to keep the institute afloat, which has been losing money and failing to attract enough students, the New Jersey Globe reports. Beyond that, there were concerns about the university’s image when polling results proved to be inaccurate.
The institute’s surveys in the 2021 gubernatorial election, for instance, showed Gov. Phil Murphy leading comfortably, but it ended up being a very tight race with Republican Jack Ciattarelli.
In a Star-Ledger op-ed, [the institute’s polling director Patric] Murray questioned the continued utility of horserace polls, and his own methodology changed after that election; Monmouth polls in recent years have not featured direct head-to-head contests, instead asking respondents their thoughts on each candidate separately.
Nonetheless, Murray’s departure from the polling institute is not a voluntary one; he will be receiving a severance package that is still under discussion. It’s not clear what the exact timeline for closing down the polling institute will be, but it seems unlikely that the pollster will be doing any polling for this year’s governor’s race.
The prospective departure of Monmouth from the polling scene leaves a greatly diminished New Jersey polling landscape in its wake. (New Jersey Globe)
As many highlighted on social media, the handwriting's been on the wall for quite some time.
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🚨 NEW: Monmouth University is now closing its polling institute.
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 7, 2025
Monmouth had Harris winning the popular vote by 3 points in 2024.
They also had Harris winning PA by 2, but then backtracked to a tie on the eve of the election.
Source: NJ Globe pic.twitter.com/QnirTl5dDr
Monmouth University is shutting down its polling division. Over the course of 98 polls barely a third were within standard MoE. Along with their average Bias of D+4.34 pic.twitter.com/0UKSEM5fFY
— America First Insight (@AF_Insight) March 7, 2025
Monmouth sucked. They’ve been effectively shut down ever since they stopped horse race polling because they were scared of continuing to screw up elections. https://t.co/abFrgwPWp8
— SoCal Data (@data_socal) March 7, 2025
Because this tweet was written by me in Sept. '21, it doesn't encapsulate what was was maybe their most egregious miss- getting Ciattarelli v Murphy wrong by 14 points in 2021.
— Tom Szymanski (@TomSzymanski) March 7, 2025
Nor does it include their miss of Kean vs. Altman 2024, which shortchanged TK and missed by 6 points.
...who have had to spend precious time explaining to volunteers and donors that the campaign isn't actually down by 18%, but rather it was just yet another shitty poll in an actually close race, sadly we haven't seen Monmouth as the "Gold Standard" for a long time.
— Tom Szymanski (@TomSzymanski) March 7, 2025
Either way it's sad, because they WERE once great, & NJ DOES suffer from a dearth of polling (seeing them continue to attempt to course correct would've been preferable to this).
— Tom Szymanski (@TomSzymanski) March 7, 2025
I'm not dancing on their grave nor do I take revelry in this, just offering some historical context.
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