← Pulse

How the Pulse works — and where each tier can lie

The Profoundd Public Sentiment Pulse is a multi-tier dashboard that measures the gap between what mainstream coverage is telling you and what other signals are showing. Every tier has documented biases. We surface them rather than hiding them. This page is the honest methodology disclosure that every confident claim on a topic page links back to.

The litmus test for any topic page

For any topic page to publish a confident "what the public thinks" headline, at least 3 of 4 tiers must be reporting data that points the same direction:

  1. Random-sample poll from a Pollster with verified track record (Tier 2)
  2. Behavioral / outcome signal — votes, real-money market moves, demographic shifts (Tier 0)
  3. Multi-platform social signal where left-coded AND right-coded platforms agree (Tier 1)
  4. Profoundd audience signal aligning with one of the above (Tier 6)

When only 1 or 2 tiers align, the topic page shows WEAK SIGNAL. The system does NOT manufacture a consensus number — the disagreement IS the headline.

Where each tier can lie

Tier 2 — Polls

We do not treat any single poll, or a blended poll average, as ground truth. We score each pollster against measured outcomes (Tier 0). Known structural problems:

Tier 1 — Social platform sentiment

We never combine left-coded and right-coded platforms into a single number. We report them as paired signals with the spread visible. The dominant problem:

Tier 3 — Prediction markets

Polymarket and Kalshi probabilities are "money on the line" signals that often beat polls on binary questions (elections, major event resolutions). Limits:

Tier 4 — Mainstream coverage

This is the comparison pole, not a truth signal. Operator-curated mainstream-source list (AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, WSJ, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, etc.) — the curation IS the editorial choice. Sentiment scoring on articles uses our existing single-LLM tagging plus a VADER backfill for transparency.

Tier 5 — Latent forecasting

Modal-language extraction (anger, fear, hope, dread, certainty) per topic over time, plus Hawkes-process attention-curve forecasting. Output: "topics likely to surface in mainstream within 7 days." Every forecast is auto-scored against eventual mainstream-coverage spike — our own accountability matches the discipline we apply to pollsters.

Tier 6 — Profoundd audience signal

Search queries, page views, AI-question topics, and feedback from Profoundd readers. Self-selected, smaller than the country, and editorially aligned with Profoundd's perspective. Most useful as: topic-emergence leading indicator (your audience leads the curve on issues they care about), Bob editorial calibration, and triangulation when other tiers disagree.

What this system cannot tell you

Even with all 6 tiers running cleanly, the Pulse cannot reliably tell you "what Americans actually think." To get closer to that, you need demographically weighted academic surveys (Pew Research, ANES, GSS) and behavioral signals (voter registration shifts, donation patterns, migration). Those reference layers are documented as Phase 1.1 roadmap; they materially expand what the system can represent.

Foundational references