Opening the Season

Opening the presidential poll season for 1960, George Gallup asked Democrats and Republicans who they favored for their own party nominations. Results: among Democrats. Tennessee's never-hear-die Senator Estes Kefauver (with 29%) led Massachusetts' eager Senator John Kennedy (23%); among Republicans, Vice President Richard Nixon easily outdistanced California's Senator William Knowland (48% to 12%). Last week Pollster Gallup began pairing the top Democrats against the top Republicans, got these answers:

Kennedy 51%

Knowland 37%

Undecided 12%

Kefauver 45%

Nixon 41%

Undecided 14%

Kennedy . . 48%

Nixon 43%

Undecided 9%

Of special interest in the Democrats v. Nixon contests was the fact that Tennessean Kefauver did as well in the Midwest, where he is still regarded as the farmers' friend, as in the South, which regards him as a civil libertarian. Massachusetts Catholic Kennedy trailed Nixon in the East, the Midwest and the Far West, picked up his entire advantage in the South, whose friendship he has been careful to cultivate, e.g., by his recent vote for the jury-trial amendment on the Senate's civil rights bill.

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