NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki spilled water all over his computer live on air during Tuesday’s election coverage and scrambled to get things back on track.
A little over two hours into his livestream covering the primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia and Washington, the chief data analyst hit a series of road bumps when he spilled a full bottle of water all over his computer and a number of papers while discussing the Michigan Democratic primary race. Chaos quickly ensued.
“Oh, I just spilled –” Kornacki noticed fast.
“Water spill,” host Adam Noboa called out.
“The computer. I don’t want this thing to break,” Kornacki said too little too late. “Oh boy, the monitor went off!”
He tried to make quick work of the cleanup but struggled to find something to wipe up the spill as it continued to seep into the papers and computer on the desk.
“Sorry, we just have to tend to this computer so it doesn’t –” Kornacki continued flustered.
“Catch on fire?” Noboa joked.
“Oh my Mac! No!” Kornacki said as he failed to save his computer from the water and then noticed his papers were also soaked through. “Oh sheez, this is all the benchmarks.”
Eventually, a hero arrived – a crew member toting towels. They got to work cleaning up the spill but the papers and computer had already been affected. None of this stopped the election night coverage for long. In fact, Kornacki was on and reporting on results for another four hours – bringing his total for the night up to six hours long.
Kornacki moved over to NBC News in 2025 after years at MSNBC – where he first went viral for his election night coverage. The data analyst shot to viral fame during his coverage of the 2020 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Throughout the night, as Kornacki referred to incoming polling data via his Big Board, the Internet started to go wild for him. After a bit of coverage, he even earned nicknames like “map daddy” and “chart throb.”
You can watch the moment in the video above.
