Should [public-opinion] be made a synonym of [polling], or vice-versa (or neither)?

Question

The tags public-opinion (56 questions; no tag wiki) and polling (183 questions; "A sampling or collection of opinions on a subject, taken from either a selected or a random group of persons") seem fairly similar. There's a decent overlap between the two tags, and most questions only tagged with public-opinon seem to be either explicitly looking for polling data, or can be best answered through the use of said data - for example:

• Was the impeachment of Donald Trump supported or opposed by the general public outside the United States?
• Do Polish citizens support law that allows judges to be disciplined for criticizing the system?
• Is the French public opinion more favorable to Muslims than to Jews?
• How high is sympathy for Israel among Bolsonaro's supporters and/or Brazilian Evangelicals?
• If climate change impact can be observed in nature, has that had any effect on rural, i.e. farming community, perception of the scientific consensus?
• Public opinion: Jeremy Corbyn for Prime Minister
• Are there polls on US public support for a wealth tax?

On the other hand, there are some questions where a synonym wouldn't really make sense, for example:

• Why do some incidents become cause célèbre?
• Does the year 2000 observation that issue alignment mainly affected the US political parties, but not the public at large still hold?

Perhaps the synonym should instead be the other way around, mapping polling to public-opinion? Or perhaps we should leave the tags separate?

Answer 1

I would suggest restricting [polling] tag to be specifically about the profession/science of polling. NOT about content of a poll, or some political topic with poll being asked for as evidence.

• "What do people think about X"? - [public-opinion]. Remove "polling tag"

• "How does polling work" (polling in general, mechanics of a specific poll) - [polling]

Please note that the first type of questions do not ask about polling. They ask about results of polling _{(even ignoring the separate point that some opinion info isn't polling generated).}

Answer 2

I don't think it makes sense for the two to be made synonyms after all.

Most of our public-opinion questions are actually about polling which is by definition about public opinion. Because polling is a more specific descriptor and we have enough questions about polling, all these questions should have the polling tag.

On the other hand, some questions are about public opinion but not about polling. You already named a few, but there are more topics out there, e.g. questions about:

• influencing public opinion (e.g. by governments or social movements)

• using existing public opinion (e.g. by politicians: populism)

• other ways of measuring public opinion, e.g. in focus groups

As such, I'd keep the public-opinion tag at least for question which are about public-opinion but not polling.

That said, since polling is about ascertaining public opinion, the public-opinion tag doesn't have to be removed from all polling questions necessarily.

Answer 3

I would make public-opinion a subset of polling. As far as I can tell, there are only three types of public-opinion questions

1. those that can only be answered with polls.
2. those that should be closed as asking for internal motivations of people.
3. those that should be closed as opinion based.

Of course, if there is a question that could be tagged with public-opinion and does not fall into one of these three categories, I would not suggest making public-opinion a synonym of polling