What Election Day Is Really Like for NBC News' Steve Kornacki
NBC News' Steve Kornacki did not wear his signature khakis to cover the United States’ 2026 midterm elections on Nov. 3. But here's what his typical election night routine looks like.
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Steve Kornacki has election night all mapped out.
The NBC News chief data analyst returned to cover the 2026 midterm elections on Nov. 3, appearing on the network's 13-hour marathon in what he described as “livestream history.”
“We’ll go nonstop through the night,” Kornacki wrote on X. “Truly hope you’ll come along for the ride.”
While the 47-year-old opted not to wear his signature khakis for this year's shift—opting for a pair of dark trousers instead—he likely will need plenty of caffeine to sustain him during his all-nighter with the “Big Board.”
His drink of choice?
“Lots of Diet Coke,” he told GQ in 2020. “I'll drink a ton of Diet Coke. I think that's the main thing. Once we start getting election results, I feed off the energy. There's constant stimulus.”
Despite being a self-proclaimed numbers guy, Kornacki often loses count of how many Diet Cokes he drinks throughout his newscasts. As he put it, “It’s just sort of a constant supply.”
“On a normal day, I'll have a couple,” Kornacki explained. “But on election night, I just keep it nearby and I’m just kind of regularly using it.”
So much so, the soda has become his sole source of sustenance during his around-the-clock coverage.
“I do feel eating slows me down,” he shared. “It will make me sleepy. That’s the thing I have found, is that the fatigue will catch up to me when I start eating.”
That’s why also why the political correspondent doesn’t eat at all on election night.
Shannon Finney/NBC via Getty Images
“I'll try to have something during the day. Maybe it's a bagel or something,” Kornacki continued. “I haven't had breakfast in 28 or 29 years.”
In fact, Kornacki only added another beverage to his rider for this year's shift: Dunkin' coffee. Still, the journalist affectionately known to fans as "Map Daddy" doesn't believe he'll need it all too much.
"Once you start doing it," he said of election coverage in an Axios interview published Nov. 3, "the adrenaline of new results, new material, new information constantly coming in, it carries you."
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