Hoover Institution

Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world, or so goes the Beach Boys song.

But will next week's election in America produce a wave? And if so, how high? A pair of Hoover Institution senior fellows and Stanford University political scientists will tell us what their tracking poll data suggests in this election.

It's coming up next on a new edition of Matters of Policy and Politics.

it's thursday october 29th 2026 and welcome back to matters of policy and politics a podcast devoted to the discussion of hoover institution research and issues of local national and geopolitical concern i'm bill whalen i'm the hoover institutions virginia hobbs carpenter distinguished policy fellow in journalism i'm not the only hoover fellow who podcast if you don't believe me go to our website which is hoover.org actually go to hoover.org or slash podcast, you'll see just the whole menu of what we have to offer.

That includes, by the way, the video and audio versions of Goodfellas that I have the great honor of moderating.

Now, October has been a busy month for elections around the world, but in a few days we'll have another referendum, and that is America going to the polls to decide who controls Congress and many of state government.

What factors are driving America's midterm elections? I asked a pair of Hoover colleagues to help us make sense of things based on what their polling data suggests.

Doug Rivers is a Hoover Institution senior fellow and a Stanford University political scientist.

You know, Steve, the thing that I would just pile on in terms of what Randy said was the visit to the university in Hangzhou was especially interesting to me.

I'm affiliated with the Hoover Institution, and when I go to Stanford University, I just sort of wander on campus and wander over to the Hoover Institution.

We were greeted, and everyone is greeted by guards at the outskirts of the university, and IDs are checked, and then you're permitted to go on campus.

And then the second thing that was very striking to me was that I visited a lot of universities over the years.

And I also knew many people of his administration.

I knew George Shultz well because we were together at Hoover Institute for many years.

But I also knew young generation.

I was a lucky person.

management in higher education.

Currently, Raj jointly serves as senior advisor to both the director of the Hoover Institution and to the president of Stanford University on matters of finance and operations.

Previously, he served as chief financial officer and administrative dean of Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

What makes Raj's background particularly interesting is the breadth of his leadership experience outside of academia.

I have known Raj for a number of years in different capacities.

I knew him particularly when he was CFO and Senior Administrative Dean at GSP at Stanford.

But currently he's in a dual role where he's the Senior Advisor to the Director of the Hoover Institution, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, for whom he worked.

many years ago when he was an assistant secretary of state for administration and she was in her secretary of state role.

Capital has wheels, wealth has wings, money goes where it is treated well, and it flees where it is targeted for confiscation.

Look at the Hoover Institution study.

The state claims this measure will raise $100 billion.

The economists at the Hoover Institution ran the real numbers.

They found it might pull in $40 billion up front, but it will end up costing California at least $25 billion a year in lost recurring revenue because the top taxpayers will leave the state entirely.

And you don't have to guess whether they will leave.

So where these calculations with today's computing power might take a long time, might take months or years to do the calculations, quantum computing accelerates that where it could only take a matter of minutes or days.

I was watching the Hoover podcasts, even though I'm probably an old hippie at heart here, I'm watching the Hoover Institute's podcast and they had surf Neil Ferguson on there talking about AI.

And he said, last Institute in the world, a very libertarian organization, not interested in creating any sorts of boundaries or barriers.

Maybe we need to think about it.

He's a really great thinker.

Senior Fellow of Military History at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Professor Emeritus of Classics at California State University.

He's not one of these who believes in Google.

He believes in thinking.

That tension, I think a lot of it arises because we're really having arguments about hypothetical thought experiments in different worlds.

This is the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century podcast, an official podcast of the Hoover Institution's Economic Policy Working Group, where we talk about economics, markets, and public policy.

I'm John Hurley, your host.

Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Greg Kaplan, who is the Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago.

It's been a lot of fun chatting with you, John.

Thanks for having me.

This is the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century podcast, an official podcast of the Hoover Institution's Economic Policy Working Group, where we talk about economics, markets, and public policy.

Thank you so much for joining us.