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The modified nodal analysis (MNA) is probably the most widely used formulation for the modeling and simulation of electric circuits. Its conventional form uses electric node potentials and currents across inductors and voltage sources as unknowns, thus taking an electric viewpoint. In this paper, we propose an alternative magnetic oriented nodal analysis (MONA) for electric circuits, which is based on magnetic node potentials and charges across capacitors and voltage sources as the primary degrees of freedom, thus giving direct access to these quantities. The resulting system has the structure of a generalized gradient system which immediately ensures passivity in the absence of sources. A complete index analysis is presented showing regularity of the magnetic oriented formulation under standard topological conditions on the network interconnection. In comparison to conventional MNA, the differential‐algebraic index of MONA is smaller by one in most cases which facilitates the numerical solution. Some preliminary numerical experiments are presented for illustration of the feasibility and stability of the new approach.