Monmouth University will shutter its gold-standard polling institute

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.

Murray, too, had publicly reckoned with his institute’s place in New Jersey politics after the 2021 gubernatorial election, which his polling had shown would be a comfortable victory for Gov. Phil Murphy but which ended up being a nailbiter between Murphy and Republican Jack Ciattarelli. In a Star-Ledger op-ed, 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. Only two New Jersey-based pollsters, Fairleigh Dickinson University and Rutgers-Eagleton, conducted polls last year of the state’s general elections for president and U.S. Senate; Stockton University still conducts some polls as well, but has not directly polled an election in years. (Quinnipiac University, once a prolific New Jersey pollster, largely pulled out of the state after 2018.)

And in a state that also has a declining print media scene and no dedicated network television market, fewer polls could mean less clarity about what’s going on in New Jersey politics than ever before. Last year, only one independent poll of any House race was conducted in the state, a Monmouth University poll of the 7th congressional district; with two competitive House races on the horizon in 2026, it’s possible that there won’t be any independent polling to rely on whatsoever.