In public relations and policy parlance, a "trial balloon" is a focused test of a possible messaging or direction intended to generate limited public response, which in turn can help inform one’s next steps.
This is sometimes called other things in different countries or contexts ("kite-flying" is more common in the UK and some Commonwealth countries, for instance, and at times you might “run [something] up the flagpole to see who salutes” rather than launching it into the air) but the idea, whichever term is used, is to give one's audience or constituency the outlines of something you're considering so you can garner actual, real-world reactions to that consideration. This then allows you to better predict the response you would likely receive from an actual, full-on commitment to that path.
So if you're running for president and not sure who would make the best running-mate (in terms of gaining the best demographic-driven, numerical advantage over likely opponents) you might start leaking possibilities to the press via unofficial channels (often through PR backchannels or by surreptitiously dropping hints to media contacts via underlings) that you're considering Person A, and when the press reports on that possibility, you can gauge public response using polls, surveys, interviews, and the like.
You can then repeat this process for Person B, Person C, etc, each with their own news cycle.
This is generally a better means of ascertaining the public’s true feelings on something because the implication is that this is a real possibility, rather than a theoretical "maybe" based on nothing.
As a result, folks are more likely to consider the concrete likelihood of a given path and share their true feelings on it (visceral reactions and all), rather than engaging with it as a less serious-seeming, what-if possibility.
Trial balloons are a useful concept to understand because once you know about them, you tend to see them all over the place: in politics, in business, in brand-strategies, and in celebrity relationship divulgences.
Our real-time reactions to these sorts of reports—which we tend to lump in with the rest of the news—can at times shape tomorrow's news, because those reactions are converted into data points (social media activity, polling trends, and so on) upon which next steps are predicated.
It can also be interesting to keep tabs on reports of this kind that lead nowhere (those that are discarded nearly as soon as they’re floated) as failed balloons can gesture at considered but dismissed paths, and may indicate the evolution of thinking behind eventual decisions, even if the details of that thinking are never formally divulged or discussed.
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