An approach is provided that analyzes electronic document sets, each of the sets written by a different author. The analysis includes performing a normalized sentiment analysis of the documents which results in normalized sentiment scores that pertain to each of the authors. The normalize sentiment scores are stored in a data store that is accessible from a question answering (QA) system. The question answering system then receives a sentiment-based question. Responsively, the QA system generates a qualitative set of candidate answers, with the candidate answers based at least in part on the normalized sentiment scores retrieved from the data store.