Dem
47
GOP
53
We've been meaning to get around to this story for a couple of weeks, so sorry it's a little out of date. Earlier this month, Monmouth University announced that it's getting out of the polling business. That ends a 20-year run, during which Monmouth became one of the best pollsters in the business, and THE best in New Jersey.
Officially, Monmouth made this call because the university felt the benefits of paying for the polling no longer justified the costs. That really means two things—first, that not enough students were signing up, such that the educational mission was not being fulfilled, and second, that the university wasn't getting much positive PR anymore. There's certainly something to that latter point; nearly all polls that come out these days either generate no response, or else generate a negative response.
We suspect there was another factor in play, though if we are right, the people who know aren't talking right now, won't talk until January 2029 at the earliest, and may never talk. Remember that some polls, whether accurate or not, produce results that are adverse to Donald Trump. And there's pretty good reason to think that for the next four years there will be bad news for the President in the majority of polls. Maybe the sizable majority, whether they are horse race polls, or approval-rating polls.
With a normal president, this would not be a problem. But Trump is not a normal president; he's a man blessed with the unfortunate combination of low self-esteem and a giant ego. And so he strives to punish those who have "wronged" him, sometimes including pollsters. Remember, for example, that he sued Ann Selzer after her (inaccurate) poll that showed Iowa as closer than it was. With Monmouth, Trump not only has lawsuits as a possible weapon, he also has additional options not available with Selzer, like yanking their federal funding.
We doubt that Trump alone would be enough to kill a university polling operation. But if a polling operation was already wobbling, we can certainly see the threat that he poses being the final straw. (Z)