In this theory, the authors advance five propositions:

(1) Voting requires comparative judgments of candidates. There are a limited number of candidates, and voters make ballot decisions on the basis of how each candidate compares one to another.

(2) Thus, candidates must distinguish themselves from their opponentsBmaking it possible for voters to select the candidate they believe best represents their interests and beliefs.

(3) Political campaign messages are the vehicle for distinguishing candidates. These campaign messages are delivered in a number of ways, including news coverage, political advertising, talk show appearances, and political speeches.

(4) These messages can be separated into categories of acclaiming (self-praising), attacking (criticisms of their opponent), and defending (responding to criticisms).

(5) Candidates must win a majority of votes to win an election. Importantly, the candidate does not have to win the majority of public opinion. Instead, he or she must win only the majority of votes, which is a significantly smaller subsection.

In examining the content of debates, televised advertisements, talk radio appearances, speeches, and free television remarks from the 1996 campaign, the authors offer an analysis of how campaign discourse functions to persuade voters to cast ballets for one candidate over another.

What Benoit et al. offer that other analyses of political communication seldom do is an examination of the broader range of political texts. By including speeches, advertisements, radio appearances, and free media statements, these scholars were able to examine political texts in several dimensions.

Additionally, Benoit et al. used utterances as their unit of analysis, where other studies have focused on larger units of communication such as an entire political commercials. By focusing on smaller units of speech, the authors were able to tease out more distinctions and better represent those message that offered a mix of functions.

Among the interesting results from this study, Benoit et al. found :

(1) Acclaiming messages dominated all forms of discourse about the election, representing approximately 66% of all communication. Attacks represented 31%, but messages used to refute opponents' attacks represented only 3%.

(2) Democratic incumbent party speakers used a greater proportion (76%) of acclaiming messages than did the Republican challenger speakers (54%).

(3) Republican challenger speakers used more attacks (44%) than Democratic incumbent speakers (21%).

(4) For all campaign communication from both sides, policy issues received substantially more discussion (72%) than did character issues (28%).

(5) Democratic incumbent speakers offered more utterances about policy issues (79%) than did their Republic counterparts (62%).

In addition to these findings, Benoit et al. compared campaign communication during the primary and general elections. They concluded that policy issues became increasingly important during the general election, while defending messages played a more important role during the primaries.

As Benoit et al. explain, it is difficult to determine how many of their conclusions are limited to the situation of the 1996 campaign, and how many of their conclusions may be extended to other campaigns.

However, this study offers some important evidence about how political messages may differ by party, the position of incumbency or challenger, and how political communication may differ from the primary to the general election. Most importantly, this study sets the stage for new functional analyses that will broaden what we know about political messages and how they are used to influence voters.