When he was running the Monmouth Poll, Patrick Murray earned a reputation as a pollster who could more accurately predict the outcome of a political race — often because he was one of the few pollsters who always was in the field, trying to get the most accurate sense of the psyche electorate.
His efforts brought him statewide and national acclaim.
There was just one problem: Predicting the winner of a political contest was not what he actually was doing.
“Giving you a prediction within a percentage point of what an election outcome is going to be really isn’t what polling is designed to do,” he told BINJE. “Polling serves you best when it tells you what’s the mood of the electorate — and, more importantly, in which direction they could move, based on their underlying, fundamental motivations.
“One of the things that’s really tough for those in the public polling sphere, in a media-facing role, is that the horse race is all that matters. The issues, the motivation, doesn’t get reported.”
That’s all changing for Murray.
The decision by Monmouth University this spring to shut down the Polling Institute (it officially closes on July 1) provided Murray an opportunity for a career pivot. He said it gave him a chance to find a role in which he can do more of what he does best: Using the unique skills he learned in social psychology to get key data.
In April, he opened StimSight Research.
Whether you need to gauge public opinion on an emerging issue, track reputational concerns, collect feedback from internal teams, assess the performance of a consumer service or public program, or explore long-term trends among specific demographic groups, Murray said StimSight Research will deliver meaningful, actionable data-driven results.
StimSight will do this by using a tried-and-true but now seemingly little-used technique: Asking the right questions.
“This is an area where I have established a reputation,” he said. “It’s the way I ask questions and the way I think about the motivation of people, which is not always in the head — many times it’s in the gut.”
To put in a politically cliche way: It’s the question, stupid.
“At the end of the day, the basic fundamental benefit of doing opinion research is being able to ask the right questions,” he said. “You can have the best technology in the world to reach voters, but if you’re not communicating with them in the right way, then you’re not going to get good data.”
Murray recently spoke to BINJE about his new venture. Here’s more of the conversation, edited for space and clarity:
BINJE: Let’s start at the beginning. Or rather, the end of the Monmouth Poll. You spent two decades there as the face of the franchise, how difficult was it to see it come to an end?
PATRICK MURRAY: The university put out a statement, which said that they have been looking at all their centers and institutes to see what they provided. The university decided that it needed to focus more on programs that were directly in the classroom and more student-facing. For me, it certainly was bittersweet because of the time I’ve spent there, but I also see it as an opportunity to try out other things that I’ve been itching to see how I could do it.
BINJE: You quickly opened StimSight. How did that happen so fast?
PM: During the entire time I was in the academic world and doing public-facing polling, a lot of people asked me for advice — off the record — just to get my views on what I thought was moving the electorate.
At some point, I realized: Why shouldn’t I be charging for this?
So, when the decision was made to close the poll by the university, it really was an opportunity for me to branch out into something that I had always thought that I’d have an interest in — working for corporate clients, trade associations, nonprofit groups and political organizations.
BINJE: StimSight is a combination of Stimulus (something that motivates a person or group to act) and Insight (a deep understanding of a person or group). That sounds great. How will you provide that?
PM: I know there’s been a lot of movement around polling in particular, around the methodologies of trying to contact people and using all sorts of newfangled ways to do that, which is great. In my prior world, I was one of the first to try many of those new techniques, but it really comes down to the question — and it’s not always what you think.
BINJE: How so?
PM: One of the things that we’ve seen over the past few years is that questions that seemed to have nothing to do with politics meant a lot, such as: Is your family getting ahead or falling behind financially? That generally trended with the state of economic well being of the country.
What we found is that the answer trends much more closely now with partisan identity, meaning when the control of the White House switches, we’ve seen wholesale switches among Democrats and Republicans and how they view their own personal, economic well-being.
That means that those types of questions, when you’re asking them straight up as seemingly rational choice questions, are actually being filtered through an entirely different mechanism.
You have to be asking questions that get at that mechanism, that get at the fears that people have, get at the hopes that people have, which means you have to start using some psychological metrics as well. That’s why it’s a perfect time for me to jump into this.
BINJE: Give us some idea of the clients that are approaching you?
PM: It is a range. It is corporate but it’s a lot of groups that have issue-advocacy concerns. They want to move an issue forward, and they want to know the best way to communicate with people in order to do that.
I started out as a policy researcher, doing a lot of work for nonprofits and government agencies in the areas of needs assessments and program evaluations. Since then, I have gained a much better understanding of motivation. So, the groups I probably offer the best value for are those who are really trying to understand ways to motivate people to think differently or to act differently — that could be in the consumer marketplace, as much as it can be in the political sphere.
BINJE: Political sphere. Have to ask: There’s a gubernatorial race going on — and you’re not involved in it. Or are you?
PM: I will say I don’t have a client for this upcoming campaign.
BINJE: Do you have any thoughts on the race — and we know not to ask you to predict a winner?
PM: I have questions about the data. We’re going to have a campaign where you may be able to win with less than 200,000 voters. I see some candidates spending a lot of money on these broad-based media campaigns, and I’m wondering: If you do more research, you can target outreach better to the kinds of voters that could be in your lane, and then you can motivate them to get out to vote.
