%0 Journal Article
%T Containing the Third
%A Ryan Neville-Shepard
%J Journal of Communication Inquiry
%@ 1552-4612
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0196859918824620
%X Third-party candidates in the United States routinely see a decline in support in the final weeks of presidential campaigns. While political scientists attribute this partially to Duverger¡¯s Law, many communication scholars have tied this collapse to media coverage that frames third-party candidates as fringe outsiders, longshots, and spoilers. This study extends these explanations of third-party failure by describing the rhetorical containment of third-party voters. Based on a case study of the 2016 presidential election and public debate about supporters of Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, the essay suggests such voters face a form of marginalization that portrays them as intruders in a two-party race, as immature and uninformed, and responsible for eventual victors, while presenting them a false choice of winning by sacrificing their cause
%K third parties
%K containment rhetoric
%K Duverger¡¯s Law
%K voters
%K 2016 presidential election
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0196859918824620