// WIRED US/UK — MOBILE & WEB
The Endlessly Meme-able Steve Kornacki Is Not a Meme Person
Standing in front of a gigantic map isn’t a traditional path to fame. But in 2020, during the presidential face-off between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Steve Kornacki became America’s sweetheart for his enthusiastic delivery of state-by-state election results. The NBC data analyst gracefully guided teeth-grinding, fist-clenching viewers through Biden’s eventual victory, and the rest is history: That same year, Kornacki was named one of People’s sexiest men alive; the internet became obsessed with his khaki pants; and he earned the nicknames “chartthrob” and “map daddy.”
Kornacki further established himself as the king of election season with the “Kornacki Cam” during 2026 midterm primary election nights, when his nonstop behind-the-scenes livestreams amassed 42 million views. Now that midterm election day is upon us, Kornacki is acutely aware of how many viewers have come to rely on him. “I get very anxious about being prepared for election night,” he says, “and then thinking of all the things that I might not be prepared for, and then just taking the phone out and trying to get prepared.”
For someone who spends a lot of time logged on, Kornacki doesn’t exactly have the habits of someone who is chronically online. He seems to know nothing at all about memes, FaceTime really isn’t his thing, and he isn’t quite sure what a subreddit is. Ask him about who’s most likely to win today’s races, though, and he’ll have no shortage of knowledge to share.
Phone model: iPhone 17 ProBasically, I break one phone per year, so I recently upgraded to it. They always say the camera's better. It never is any different to me, and the battery's always great for 10 days.
Computer model: a DellIt's been in its office probably as long as I've been at NBC. It has a thing on it that says Windows 7 Pro, which I think is old. This thing is on its last leg because I've just been too lazy to replace it. I never really got into Macs. I think I had one once, and I just remember not really liking it. I know it's supposed to be user-friendly, but it actually drove me a little crazy.
Average daily screen time: 3 hours, 35 minutesThat is depressing. That's more than 12.5 percent of my life. And then you take out the eight hours of sleep, it's an even bigger piece of the pie. I thought about taking dramatic steps to change it and, like most of my thoughts about dramatic steps to change my life, I never actually do it.
It’s texting, email, definitely there's social media, which is a lot of just trying to make sure I'm not missing something that's happening in my world. This time of year, with the election, I'll have a panicky thought about a particular state that I'm going to cover on election night and some aspect of it, and then I'll think of some blind spot that I have and I'll try to fix it on the spot.
Music app: SpotifyIt's fun at the end of the year, they give you your top songs. It says my all-time top song is “My Girl” by the Temptations.
Is Spotify the one that did your listening age or something a couple years ago? Mine was 87 or something.
Number of unread emails: 53,828When it was at about 5,000 it overwhelmed me, but now it's just part of the furniture.