Monmouth University will shutter its gold-standard polling institute

[RandySF]

Monmouth University is planning to imminently shutter its lauded polling institute, sources with direct knowledge of the matter have told the New Jersey Globe, robbing New Jersey and the nation of one of its premier pollsters.

Patrick Murray, the polling institute’s director, declined to comment. A Monmouth University press contact did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Murray, a former pollster at the Rutgers University Eagleton Poll, left to join Monmouth University in 2005, and in the following 20 years built the university’s fledgling polling institute into one of the most well-respected pollsters in the nation. The institute, which conducted polls of both New Jersey races and national elections, was consistently rated as an A+ pollster by FiveThirtyEight and was treated as New Jersey’s “gold standard” poll.

But in recent years, sources told the Globe, administrators at Monmouth University had begun considering whether the polling institute was worth continuing to support. Some university leaders felt it was losing too much money while not attracting enough students, and any poll that Monmouth released that ultimately ended up being inaccurate – always a hazard of the polling trade – was seen as a possible stain on the university’s image.


https://newjerseyglobe.com/polling/monmouth-university-will-shutter-its-gold-standard-polling-institute/