UBS: Special Washington Update

Voters likely will view the VP candidates as little more than curiosities and instead focus on Clinton and Trump, who both have well-defined and strong personal brands. The VP picks can make a difference, however, if one of the choices (or both) is not deemed to be qualified to serve as president if a tragedy struck the sitting president. We believe that John McCain was hurt by his choice of Sarah Palin in 2008 for this reason. Although we are downplaying the VP picks, we expect Clinton to follow a familiar script and pick a candidate over the next ten days who she believes will help her turn out two important voting blocs in large numbers—minority voters and younger voters. It has been more difficult to project a Trump selection, but he certainly needs someone with political connections and experience with Republican lawmakers. Indiana Governor Mike Pence seems to be the favorite as Trump plans to make a decision any day now. Take these selections with a grain of salt since they won’t matter very much to the November outcome.

Unity for Democrats? Both parties want to show voters the strength and unity of the support they have for their nominees and to end any “family fights” or distractions that take the media eye off of this unity theme. With Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton this week, Democrats are closer to unification and will probably have a less-contentious convention as a result. Sanders’ supporters will still grumble about Clinton’s commitment to their causes, but we sense that most of them will ultimately get behind Clinton. This is a critical issue since younger voters fueled Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 as well as Sanders’ more recent rise, and Clinton will need the vast majority of them to win in November. Still, more work needs to be done to nail down the Sanders supporters who may be slow in making the switch from Bernie to Hillary. We expect many of the convention’s speakers and activities to focus specifically on these voters.

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