As NBC News prepares to kick off its coverage of the 2026 midterm elections on Tuesday with the Democratic and Republican primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas, viewers will get a taste of what the network has in store for the rest of the year. This includes a large number of senior data analyst Steve Kornacki, on every platform.
The NBC News data analyst will get an expanded “Kornacki Cam” for 2026. And while previous efforts were limited to NBCUniversal-owned platforms (looking at you, Peacock!), this year’s version will air everywhere people already consume news content: on NBC News’ digital platforms, as well as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, all of which complement NBC’s mainline coverage.
“It’s liberating,” Kornacki says. Hollywood Reporter In an interview for Expanded Broadcast Strategy. “I usually think on election night, there’s a certain bar that I have to hit with the election results to get the producer’s attention, to get me on the air with the result. Doing it this way, on this live broadcast, there’s no barrier. Every result airs. Every county result airs. Every little twist and turn airs.”
In fact, NBC News is betting that Kornacki Cam can be a tool for building trust in the media at a time when media trust is at an all-time low.
“We very much hope this is something that can help restore trust by being more transparent,” says Rebecca Blumenstein, editor-in-chief at NBC News, adding that allowing viewers a peek behind the curtain may help them better understand how NBC does what it does. “Steve sits there at the big board, and he gets the signal from the decision-making desk that the outcome is coming. … He presents it to the viewers and readers as it’s happening, and then he tabulates the results of one county versus another and what’s going to happen.”
NBC tested Kornacki’s new camera last December for a special election in Tennessee, garnering more than 1.5 million views, surprisingly large numbers for a one-time special election. Kornacki says they experimented with this broadcast, and embraced the “behind-the-scenes” effect: While he was analyzing the results for the broadcast audience, he would also tell them when he was about to go live on NBC News Now or broadcast the broadcast.
“I’ll be talking to this kind of hardcore election audience on the live stream, and then I’ll say to them, ‘Okay guys, wait a minute, hang on here for 10 seconds,’ and they’ll, you know, direct me to the News Now broadcast, and I’ll talk to News Now for two minutes, and I’ll say some things that you’ve already heard me say, but bear with me here, because we want to let the rest of the country know what we’ve been talking about.” “Here,” Kornacki says. “And then I’ll go and I’ll talk for two minutes on News Now, and talk a little bit more broadly, a little more generally, about the headlines that we saw in the results, and then we’ll go back to the live audience.”
“We feel that with him now appearing on Kornacki Cam in a new and expanded way, we can really bring our audience more of Kornacki and show them the reality of the process, and how Steve compiles results and data,” Blumenstein says.
For Kornacki, this means data nerds and political junkies can get what they want, while watching the results on TV, or wherever they are, on primary and election nights throughout the year, well into November.
“This is an opportunity for the results to stop, from the first precinct reports until the race is called, so I can show viewers and take them on that journey that I took every election night, and was able to share parts of it with them,” Kornacki says. “Now, I can share the whole thing.” “Now, every time I see something coming in, or a new result coming in from a county or a certain part of the state, I can show it right away. I can talk about it. I think the viewer has the opportunity to get a more comprehensive picture of how an election is won or lost.”
In a news environment full of pundits, Kornacki explains it like this:
“With Steve, there’s almost no analysis involved, he’s able to analyze data in real time in a way that no one else can,” Blumenstein says.
And now viewers can come along for the ride.
