In a political climate where many Americans are looking for facts without bias, agenda or spin, NBC News is determined to be the straightforward, precise and transparent source they need.
In December of 2025, Tennessee’s special election for the 7th Congressional District was drawing national attention. Matt Van Epps, a Trump-endorsed Republican, was up against State Representative Aftyn Behn, a progressive with Democratic momentum.
Voters in the Nashville area were hungry for any morsel of information on the contentious race. Politicos across the country were eagerly waiting to see if the traditionally Republican-voting Tennessee district would turn blue. They didn’t want chatter. They wanted information. And they wanted it from a trusted source.
We gave them NBC News Chief Data Analyst Steve Kornacki.
We centered the coverage around Kornacki and the election results only. Unlike other networks with a few moments of facts and a few hours of feelings, NBC News went the opposite way, delivering two hours of straight election data - from the time polls closed until the votes were counted - streamed to five different platforms in a way never done before.
The coverage plan was simple. The execution was not.
NBC News Chief Data Analyst Steve Kornacki had to digest election information from 14 Tennessee counties in real time, while delivering the information to a rapidly-growing audience - hundreds of thousands all streaming the coverage live.
In doing so, Kornacki broke the fourth wall - talking directly to viewers nonstop for hours, with his producer sitting off screen helping feed him information as results rolled in.
It seemed effortless to those watching at home. But in reality, the preparation took weeks.
Steve Kornacki and his producer, Adam Noboa, researched each county - the demographics, the voting history, even the terrain - and the candidates for weeks. They were backed by the NBC News Decision Desk team and Liz Johnstone, the director of data and election experiences at NBC News, who dissected the district’s election history in both local and national races.
The social video teams coordinated to sync the coverage on YouTube, Instagram, NBCNews.com, TikTok and Facebook. While the production team behind the scenes switched Kornacki back and forth from live reports streaming on NBC News NOW to the rolling Kornacki Cam coverage, while monitoring live feeds from the region and pivoting whenever a county was called.
Kornacki walked viewers through it all. He told them when he was stopping to do a hit for the streaming newscast. He apologized when he had to pause to chug some water. He excused himself when he pulled out a calculator for the one time he couldn’t do the math in his head. It was transparency most people never see from a news outlet, especially on an election night.
For the first time ever, unlike any other outlet, the election night coverage didn’t just feature election data. It was all election data. No commentary, no opinion, no slant.
The December 2, 2025, Kornacki Cam coverage streamed live on YouTube, NBCNews.com, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. And the response was immediate and overwhelmingly positive.
The Kornacki Cam stream had a total of 1.5 million views — with more than 627,000 from YouTube alone. It was the number one news stream in peak concurrents on YouTube. The Kornacki Cam showed up first in video searches when looking up the Tennessee Special Election on Google.
More important than the numbers was the reaction from grateful viewers.
They flooded our YouTube comment section and posted messages on X thanking NBC News for delivering an engaging election night experience grounded in the vote.
The NBC News Kornacki Cam went beyond time-honored traditions of election night coverage to give viewers a source of truth at a moment when many are struggling with who to trust: just the facts, delivered with urgency and total transparency.
