I previously mentioned that widely admired Iowa pollster Selzer & Co. was exiting the polling business. It turns out there’s more fallout from the last election.
First, this shocker:
Seventeen years after its launch reshaped the political polling landscape, the outlet 538 is being shut down.
The last 15 or so employees of the once influential data aggregator are set to be laid off by Disney’s ABC News Group, according to a Tuesday report by the Wall Street Journal.
538’s closure is part of a round of job cuts which are expected to impact 200 employees working for Disney Entertainment Networks operations. [HuffPost]
Having a meta-pollster, an organization capable of analyzing and comparing pollsters, is an enormously important part of the continual effort to improve pollsters’ work, at least if they are honest. Certainly, those pollsters who are in the game to make money by influencing voters, rather than merely measuring them, will bid FiveThirtyEight a fond farewell, but for those who simply strove to improve their accuracy, this is a painful loss. I suppose that, with Silver’s exit several years ago, this was inevitable.
And Monmouth University’s polling service is going away:
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. …
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. [New Jersey Globe]
I’m sorry, what did they say? They do know this is a university, not a business? That poor performance, and how to recover from same, is an important part of the educational experience?
That’s dismaying, but some educational institutes have moved business people into key positions. I’ve not seen a systematic investigation of their effect, but I’m guessing they are at a marked divergence from educational goals.
More understandable is this:
[Director] 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.
What does it all mean? More research, no doubt; but it’s not clear that’ll happen.
