- Pritzker Fellows
- Current Fellows
- Chuck Todd
Chuck Todd
NBC Chief Political Analyst
Biography
Chuck Todd is NBC News’ chief political analyst. He is the former moderator of the network’s flagship Sunday public affairs program Meet the Press, where he led the show for nearly 10 years and served as NBC News political director, spearheading all of the network’s political coverage. Todd is a regular fixture on NBC News’ primetime political and election programming across the broadcast network and NBC News NOW, the fastest-growing streaming network in the country.
Todd, a five-time Emmy® Award winner for his contributions to NBC News’ election night and breaking news coverage, served as moderator of Meet the Press from 2014-2023. He led the show to become the #1 rated Sunday public affairs show for six straight years, finishing 2021 as the most-watched Sunday show in the all-important age 25-54 demographic most valued by advertisers. Under his leadership, the show was #1 in total viewers in the nation’s capital every single week for eight years straight.
Building on the success of MTP Daily, which Todd anchored for eight seasons on MSNBC, Todd launched Meet the Press NOW in June 2022 — a daily show on NBC News’ streaming platform, NBC News NOW, that brings the insight and analysis made famous by the Sunday show to a wider audience than ever before. In addition to the seasonal deep-dive show Meet the Press Reports and the weekly “Chuck ToddCast,” the daily show furthers the expansion of the iconic Sunday show brand into the digital and streaming arena.
In Nov. 2022, Meet the Press commemorated its 75th anniversary and produced the sixth annual Meet the Press Film Festival, the preeminent showcase for issue-based short documentary films. Over the last five years, the annual Meet the Press Film Festival has showcased nearly 100 issue-based short documentary films from more than six countries, including over a dozen Oscar® and Emmy® nominees and the 2020 Oscar winner for Best Documentary Short Subject, Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re A Girl).
During the 2020 presidential election, Todd co-moderated two of the network’s presidential primary debates. The first, in June 2019, hosted by NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo, set records as the most-watched Democratic presidential debate in history, with 18.1 million viewers and nine million livestream viewers. Then, in February 2020, the network broke records once again with the most-watched Democratic debate ever, averaging nearly 20 million total viewers and 13.5 million livestream viewers.
Prior to taking the helm of Meet the Press, Todd served as NBC News Chief White House Correspondent, traveling the world covering President Obama. From 2010 to 2014, Todd also hosted MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, featuring daily interviews with members of Congress and other newsmakers.
In 2009, Todd co-authored with Sheldon Gawiser the definitive election result analysis book for the 2008 presidential campaign, titled How Barack Obama Won. His second book, The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House, was released in November 2014.
In 2007, Tim Russert, then-Washington bureau chief and Meet the Press moderator, recruited Todd to join NBC News as the network’s political director. Prior to joining NBC News, Todd worked at the National Journal’s “The Hotline” for 15 years, serving for six of those years as the editor-in-chief.
Todd is the winner of five Emmy awards for his reporting. He has been named "The Most Powerful Journalist in Washington” by GQ as part of the magazine's "50 Most Powerful People in Washington" list. He has received honorary doctorates from The George Washington University, Marymount University, and Marist College.
Todd is a native of Miami and currently resides in Arlington, Va. with his wife, Kristian, and two children.
Follow Todd on Twitter and on Facebook.
Seminars
“The Last Lap With Chuck Todd”
A week before the election, the NBC News Chief Political Analyst will join the IOP as a visiting Fellow to take us through the final twists and turns of a remarkable campaign season. Chuck, an award winning journalist, has covered federal politics since 1992, in the role of Chief White House Correspondent, host of The Daily Rundown, NBC News Now and as the venerated moderator of Meet the Press. He is also the author of The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House and co-author of How Barack Obama Won: A State-by-State Guide to the Historic 2008 Presidential Election. His seminars will hit the horse race high notes - deconstructing the last and crucial polls from battleground states and closing arguments of the two White House aspirants - and go deeper to appraise this campaign and moment in history in the context of contemporary American politics. As the co-moderator of the two most-watched Democratic presidential debates in NBC’s history, Chuck will put UC students through their paces as moderator of a campus debate centered around the issues most central to Gen Z voters.
Seminars are open to current UChicago students only.
Whoever wins this White House race, Joe Biden will end his tenure as the second one-term president in a row of a mere 11 in our nation’s history. We will discuss why this matters and the negative implications of short-term leadership in government. This seminar will also cover the election news of the day.
Chuck Todd, who has covered federal races since 1992, will deconstruct the last and crucial polls from battleground states at the top of the ticket and down ballot, and assess the closing arguments of the Harris and Trump campaigns.