What Is Opinionomics?
Introducing a new concept
Every day, millions – if not billions - of opinions are expressed through elections, opinion polls, newspaper comments, WhatsApp groups, public consultations, conversations between neighbours and arguments on social media. They influence governments, businesses, charities, schools, hospitals, faith groups and families. They shape almost every collective decision we make.
Yet despite the importance of opinion, there is remarkably little agreement about how opinions themselves should be studied.
Political science examines governments, institutions and elections. Economics studies incentives, markets and the allocation of resources. Psychology explores the individual mind, while sociology considers groups and societies. Polling measures what a sample of people say they think at a particular moment.
Each of these disciplines tells us something. But none places opinion itself at the centre of the enquiry.
This is the gap we have begun to explore at Suffrago. We call it Opinionomics.
We use the term most cautiously. We are not claiming to have founded a new academic discipline (yet), nor suggesting that existing fields have somehow failed. Opinionomics is, for now, an emerging idea. It draws on political science, economics, psychology, sociology, statistics, philosophy, data science and artificial intelligence.
The proposition is simply that opinion deserves to be studied more directly and systematically than it is today.
Opinionomics, we posit, is concerned not only with what people think, but with why they think it. It examines how opinions relate to one another, how they are distributed between different groups, how firmly they are held, how they change over time, how they connect to evidence and how they change when the evidence changes. It also asks how opinions influence decisions—and how decisions, institutions and events subsequently reshape opinion.
Polling provides a useful illustration of the distinction.
A poll may tell us that 58 per cent of people oppose a proposal. This is of course valuable information, but it is only the beginning. Why do the 58% oppose it? Do they reject the objective itself, or merely the proposed method? Are different groups reaching the same conclusion for entirely different reasons? Are there any agreed facts upon which to form an opinion and are those facts known and to whom? Are some objections based on practical experience while others arise from distrust, identity, cost or perceived unfairness? Is there an alternative proposal that might command much broader support?
The percentage matters. But the structure beneath the percentage may matter even more.
Opinionomics is therefore not an alternative to polling. Polling is one of its essential tools, we say. The difference is that Opinionomics seeks to understand more fully what the answers mean, what lies behind them and how they connect with evidence and behaviour.
Nor is Opinionomics simply another name for politics. Opinions are not confined to elections, parties or government. Every organisation depends upon them. Employers need to understand their workforce. Universities seek the views of students. Businesses want to understand customers. Local authorities consult residents. Charities ask communities what matters to them. Families negotiate priorities and make decisions together. Religious groups have decisions to make.
Opinion is woven through almost every part of collective human life.
Opinionomics is also distinct from economics. Economics has transformed our understanding of incentives, trade-offs and choice. But people are not motivated solely by income, price or utility. They care about fairness, trust, dignity, identity, belonging, security, status, faith, loyalty and principle. These forces shape both what people believe and how they behave, often in ways that conventional economic models struggle to capture.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Opinionomics, however, is its relationship with evidence.
Public opinion matters, but it is not of course automatically correct. Evidence - or truth however defined - is key, but evidence does not interpret itself, decide priorities or remove legitimate disagreements about values. Opinion without evidence can become noise, manipulation or collective error.
At Suffrago, we are exploring how structured public participation, trusted data, expert knowledge, lived experience and artificial intelligence might be brought together. The objective is not merely to discover what people think, but to understand why they think it, how different perspectives fit together, where opinion conflicts with available evidence and whether better information changes people’s judgements over time.
This, we say, is a more ambitious task than measuring opinion. It is an attempt to understand its structure, formation, movement and consequences.
Underlying this is a simple observation: every person sees only part of reality. The same is true of every institution, dataset, expert, journalist, government and artificial intelligence system. Each sees the world through its own information, experience, incentives and limitations.
Opinionomics begins with the belief that better decisions become possible when those partial views are brought together honestly, tested against evidence and made easier to understand. And if better decisions are made, society benefits.
Whether Opinionomics ultimately becomes an accepted field of study is not for Suffrago to decide. That will depend on whether researchers, organisations and communities find the concept useful; whether they challenge it, improve it and apply it to problems we have not yet imagined, as well creating frameworks and methods for its study.
History is littered with ideas which sounded exciting but changed very little, or even made matters worse. The value of Opinionomics will not be determined by its name, but by whether it helps people make better decisions. Time will tell.
Andrew Gray, Founder