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Bing's Election 2012 page can filter news by political bias

Microsoft's search engine creates an election page that gives partisan users the option of modifying their news all the way to the right or all the way to the left.

Dara Kerr Former senior reporter
Dara Kerr was a senior reporter for CNET covering the on-demand economy and tech culture. She grew up in Colorado, went to school in New York City and can never remember how to pronounce gif.
Dara Kerr
Bing's Election 2012 page lets users filter their news with a political bias slider. Screenshot by Dara Kerr/CNET

As election results roll in with Barack Obama taking Vermont and Mitt Romney winning Kentucky and West Virginia, Bing lets users tailor the political news they're getting.

In it's Election 2012 page, Microsoft's search engine has what you'd normally see, a map with color-coded states, numbers showing how many states each candidate has won, up-to-the-minute news, and results from the Senate and House races. But, there's one additional feature that's a bit more unusual -- a political bias slider.

In the upper right corner of the page, users can slide the bar to the left and all of the news results they'll see are tailored to Democratic voters. If the slider if dragged to the right, the news is then re-sorted for Republican voters. The slider also lets users pick exactly in the middle or show results leaning slightly left or right.

Many tech companies created special features on their sites for this year's election. Twitter created a one-stop shop Election 2012 event page where political junkies can get all their news in real-time, Facebook posted an "I Voted" button to let users share the fact that they made it to the polls today, and dozens of app developers made election specific apps with voter guides, candidate profiles, and the news.