The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:00:59 · S2, Scott Galloway, Fareed Zakaria
[00:00:59] S2: Hey, everybody. It's Sue Bird. I'm back this week with a brand new episode of Bird's Eye View. I'm joined by Emmy winning basketball analyst, LaChyna Robinson, to discuss the themes that defined the twenty twenty six WNBA season and her commitment to uplifting the next generation of women in sports broadcasting. But first, LaChyna and break down the wild momentum swings that have made this year's WNBA finals an absolute fight. So check out Bird's Eye View on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. [00:01:28] S3: Welcome to a special episode of The Prof G Pod. Today is November 3, election day, and we're joined by Fareed Zakaria for a last minute breakdown of this year's midterm elections and where America goes from here. We discussed with Fareed why today feels different from past elections, what the Iran war, Musk's actions of treason in Ukraine, and other foreign policy issues mean for the future of our politics, and what The US needs to do to restore its global reputation. Simply put, I can't think. If I had a list of anyone I wanted to speak to on this day, we got them. Anyways, we hope you enjoy this conversation with Fareed, and make sure to get out and vote if you haven't already. Thanks very much. Fareed, where does this podcast find you? [00:02:12] S4: In New York, in in my study in New York City. [00:02:15] S3: Just another day, but it does happen to be what feels like a fairly important election. It's November 3. What do you see is special or different about today versus other midterms?
00:02:29 · Fareed Zakaria
[00:02:29] S4: I think that, you know, we are at a moment where this wave of backlash of right wing populism is now thoroughly entrenched throughout the world. Right? You look at Australia. I was reading about the... There was this woman, Pauline Hanson, a kind of right wing populist. Twenty years ago, she had a brief flurry, seemed like it was dead. Well, she's back. She's now turned into the AFD or the Marine Le Pen of Australia. Right? And so we're seeing we're seeing this movement almost everywhere. And we're wondering, is there a break? Is there a... You know, is it peaking? Peaking? It certainly seems as though in many places it is not providing many answers. You know, you look at Brexit, and Britain is without any question worse off than it was before. You look at the Trump policies, by and large, they have not been successful. Manufacturing is not back in The United States. We were not able to somehow decouple the entire American economy from China. And yet there is this appeal for largely cultural reasons. So the question is, are we witnessing a break? Is... Could this could this midterm be the first moment where people say, you know what? This tide has peaked. It is now more of a contest. It's receding. Obviously, lot depends on how the midterms play out. But you know, there is a potential here for the first significant breach where you say, alright. You know, maybe we're we're moving back to... We're moving to something else in this ten year phase of right wing populism.
00:04:22 · Scott Galloway
[00:04:22] S3: And you had, I always watch your show, GPS, who said something that really stuck with me. And that is, generally speaking, the two parties, it was typically a smaller and smaller number of people were deciding elections in a smaller and smaller number of states. Now the biggest registration is among quote unquote independents. And that is we have never had as many quote unquote swing voters. Elections have never been this up for grabs. Talk more about that and what it means for today's election.
00:04:52 · Fareed Zakaria
[00:04:52] S4: So 45% of the American electorate is now independents, the highest number ever. And the most interesting in new data is around exactly what you said, the sort of malleability of voters. You know, we have this picture of America as totally polarized, tribal, people are in... Dug into their positions. They don't listen. They don't change their minds. And that is true, but it's true of a fairly narrow base on both sides of the of the spectrum. What you're now witnessing is this much larger group of independents who are beginning to to to shift. And in a way, Trump has, in some ways, made that happen by first bursting onto the scene, being this renegade Republican attracting a bunch of Democrats who weren't that interested in the party. But then, know, if I can be honest, screwing it all up, you know, particularly in the in the in the second term, massively under delivering Iran war tariffs, cost of living inflation, massive overdoing of the ICE immigration raids. And as a result, you're seeing people who had flocked to him move away almost as fast as they as they flocked. This is unusual. As you know, Scott, people often say about American politics, if you get a voter to vote twice for a party, they're usually locked in for life. Well, now what you see... Are seeing is a huge... You saw a huge Hispanic surge toward Donald Trump in '24, and all polling indicates that has collapsed. That is why if Texas goes to Talarico, it will be... The single biggest issue will be the collapse of Hispanic support. It's something like he's down close to 20 points from where he was in '24. But also Asian Americans, though they're they're not as significant, black Americans had a... There was a small surge among black men for Trump that seems to have collapsed. Young people, small surge for Trump. Not not so small, maybe 10 points, completely collapsed. We are back with young voters to the the split that we saw in o eight with Obama when Obama managed to get this huge number of young voters. So you see what I'm saying is you had a huge wave of people going toward Trump, but that wave is almost entirely receded. So could this be, you know, the new the new pattern? Large number of independents in the middle. They... You know, for idiosyncratic reasons, for ideological reasons, for god knows what reasons, they move back and forth.
00:07:30 · Fareed Zakaria, Scott Galloway
And so finally, we get we get back to actual contestation in American elections. This is what I'm hoping for. Because in this election, because of gerrymandering, there are only 38 competitive seats in the House of Representatives. It is quite possible that the supreme Soviet... The legislature of the Soviet communist system had a higher turnover in its legislature than the House of Representatives currently has among itself. [00:07:59] S3: But that is changing, no? That's what I'm hoping. South Carolina's in play. None of us would that would have been solid Republican just three months ago. Kansas is in play. [00:08:12] S4: And, you know, a lot of these... The gerrymandering could turn out to backfire. Again, we'll have to see how the results come out. But you see, what happened with gerrymandering is they they took a bunch of very solidly Republican seats. Seats Republicans would win by 20 points. And they turned them into two districts that Republicans would win comfortably by eight, nine points. But if you have a d plus 12 Democratic wave and it translates into 12 in that local district, well, all of a sudden, lost two Republican seats where you would have won the one. So, you know, gerrymandering also could backfire if you start to see genuine shifts and genuine, you know, malleability among voters.
00:08:12 · Fareed Zakaria, Scott Galloway
[00:08:12] S4: And, you know, a lot of these... The gerrymandering could turn out to backfire. Again, we'll have to see how the results come out. But you see, what happened with gerrymandering is they they took a bunch of very solidly Republican seats. Seats Republicans would win by 20 points. And they turned them into two districts that Republicans would win comfortably by eight, nine points. But if you have a d plus 12 Democratic wave and it translates into 12 in that local district, well, all of a sudden, lost two Republican seats where you would have won the one. So, you know, gerrymandering also could backfire if you start to see genuine shifts and genuine, you know, malleability among voters. [00:09:01] S3: In investing, we like to think there's such a thing as an uncorrelated asset. That if you buy Japanese bond, has nothing to do with buying, you know, Nvidia. And the reality is over time, everything's become somewhat correlated because of global media. And if the guy has to sell bonds in Japan, that probably means he has to sell some of his Nvidia stock to fund his margin call or whatever. I find that's true of politics too, that generally speaking, elections or themes, broader themes across the world are somewhat correlated. When you look across the world at recent elections and recent trends, does what's happening in America give you echoes of anything else that's happened around the world recently? What this election most like in other parts of the world that you've been observing?