What is Passion Pulse?

National Nine News online is using Passion Pulse to map the mood of the electorate.

Each day during the election, we will be asking our audience to react to a choice quote from a politician, commentator or newsmaker. Voters react using a slider to indicate whether they strongly agree or disagree with the statement, or if they care at all. We then tally this information along with some basic demographic information about each voter.

From the results page, you will be able to learn not just what the country thinks, but what people with certain voting intentions think, how the sexes differ, and even how voters from within your own state or electorate are reacting.

The "mountain" graphic at the top of the page shows the overall size of the response to each daily quote, indicating the general interest or passion a topic is generating.

The electoral map will also show you how voters' reactions vary across states and regions. By default, reactions are displayed geographically on a map of Australia. Although this is a familiar view, it is biased strongly towards regional and remote areas. To correct this bias you can switch to a population density view, which represents every electorate as identically sized blocks.

How does it work?

The Passion Pulse timeline shows how levels of passion vary from quote to quote. It is a combination of participation rates and the cumulative intensity of each user's reaction.

You can take a look at what is concerning the electorate by either rolling over our Passion Pulse graph or by viewing the results listed to the right of our map below.

• View Passion Pulse