Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry gained an average of 2.75 percentage points in eight nationwide polls after his party's convention, the smallest post- nomination boost for a candidate in three decades.

Kerry, 60, a four-term Massachusetts senator, may have received less of an increase than the 5 to 7 percentage point historical average because voters likely decided who to support months ago, according to Princeton, New Jersey-based Gallup Organization.

``This election, we are dealing with a more polarized and more fixed electorate than we have seen in the past,'' Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, said in an interview last week.

Kerry gained 1 percentage point or less against President George W. Bush, 58, in four of eight surveys conducted after he accepted his party's presidential nomination July 29. Kerry gained 4 percentage points or more in four other polls. Kerry led Bush in seven of the eight polls, which showed his support at between 45 and 50 percent. The same polls showed Bush's support at from 42 to 51 percent.

All but one of the surveys showed a statistical tie because the results were within the poll margin of error. The average was calculated using only results for registered voters. In the 2000 election, about a third of registered voters didn't cast ballots.

A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll of 900 registered voters conducted Aug. 3-4 found Kerry supported by 46 percent to 42 percent for Bush and 2 percent for independent candidate Ralph Nader. The margin of error is 3 percentage points. Bush led Kerry 43 percent to 42 percent in a Fox News poll taken before the convention.

Bush's job approval rating fell to 44 percent, the lowest level the Fox poll has found during his presidency, from 47 percent last month.

`Confident in Their Man'

``Kerry voters are now more confident in their man and more committed to him,'' said John Gorman, president of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Opinion Dynamics Corp., according to Fox. ``The ability of the Bush campaign to paint Kerry with a negative brush has been diminished and so has the chance for any major electoral movement.''

Forty-three percent of people questioned in the Fox survey said Kerry was the more honest and trustworthy of the two candidates compared with 36 percent for Bush. A June 22-23 poll found 31 percent trusted Kerry more and 42 percent called Bush more trustworthy.

Bush has a 6 percentage point advantage over Kerry on which candidate would do a better job handling the war on terrorism. Among likely voters Kerry has 47 percent to 43 percent for Bush and 2 percent for Nader. In the July 20-21 survey, Kerry had 43 percent to Bush's 44 percent with Nader winning 3 percent.

Iowa Futures Market

The Iowa Electronic Markets shows Bush leading in election futures contracts with 51.5 Sunday compared with 48.6 for Kerry. The price of a Kerry futures contracts slipped from 51.6 on July 26, the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Bush's re-election contracts rose from 49.2 at the start of the Democratic convention.

The futures trade on a scale of 0-100. After the election, the contracts on the winner will pay out $1 and the losing candidate's contracts will expire worthless. The market is operated by the University of Iowa's Henry B. Tippie College of Business. The institution is based in Iowa City.

Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief campaign strategist, predicted media coverage of the four-day Democratic convention would allow Kerry to surge ahead by as many as 15 percentage points.

The Democratic National Convention ``was historic, measured by the fact there was no convention bounce,'' said Stephen Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign.

Less for Incumbents

The Republicans don't expect Bush to rise in the polls after their convention, which begins Aug. 30, because incumbents traditionally receive two-thirds the boost of the challenger, Schmidt said.

``We said all along this is going to be a close race until the end and this is a sign of that,'' said Chad Clanton, a Kerry spokesman.

Kerry said he ``got what we wanted'' from the convention. ``A lot more people know me,'' he said last week. ``There aren't that many undecided, so there isn't much room for this kind of change.''

Kerry said that he went into the convention with support from 48 percent of potential voters, higher than most challengers in past elections. ``So we're way ahead of where anybody's ever been,'' Kerry said.

Then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, for example, went into the 1992 Democratic convention with 44 percent support and left with 58 percent, according to ABC News. He went on to win the White House from former President George H.W. Bush, the current president's father.

2000 Election

After the 2000 Democratic National Convention, former Vice President Al Gore erased a 16-point lead held by Bush to gain 47 percent support to 46 percent for Bush, according to a Gallup poll at the time.

Gallup's last pre-election survey in 2000 showed Bush with 48 percent, Gore with 46 percent and Nader with 4 percent. The final vote gave Bush 47.9 percent, Gore 48.4 percent and Nader 2.7 percent. While Gore won the national popular vote, Bush got the most electoral votes, which are awarded by each state to the candidate who wins a majority.

The Kerry campaign should ``shrug it off,'' said Karlyn Bowman, who studies public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based research organization that promotes limited government and private enterprise.

``They just need to move on and say they expect this to be a close race until we get a lot closer to the election,'' Bowman said.

Domestic Policy

The convention may have focused too much on Kerry's ability to lead a nation at war and his military experience in Vietnam and not enough on the domestic policies that he and his vice presidential candidate John Edwards, 51, a first-term senator from North Carolina, are offering said Charles Gabriel, a Washington-based political analyst at Prudential Equity Group LLC.

``They didn't really make a strong case as to what Kerry and Edwards would do on domestic policy, economic policy and, frankly, to get us out of Iraq,'' Gabriel said.

A Time magazine poll found voters consider the economy the main election issue and showed Kerry widened his lead to 5 percentage points in the week after the convention.

``The key deciding issue for voters remains the economy'' with 27 percent citing it as the most important issue, unchanged from the earlier survey, the magazine said in a news release distributed by e-mail. The war on terrorism is second at 18 percent, Time said.

Kerry led Bush 48 percent to 43 percent with 4 percent for Nader in the Aug. 3-5 survey, Time said. The Time results on the presidential race, based on answers from 758 likely voters, is not included in the average boost for Kerry because the magazine didn't provide percentages for all registered voters.

Creating Jobs

On the question of who would do a better job creating jobs, Kerry led 55 percent to 39 percent for Bush, the magazine said. U.S. Labor Department statistics released Friday showed job growth slowed for the fourth consecutive month. Employers added 32,000 workers in July, below the median estimate of 240,000 in a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

A Cable News Network/USA Today/Gallup survey conducted July 30-Aug. 1, found Kerry, who had been leading 49 percent to 45 percent before the convention, fell into tie with Bush among registered voters. About a third of registered voters didn't cast ballots in the 2000 election.

Kerry trailed 47 percent to 51 percent among 1,129 likely voters interviewed by Gallup. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

`Good News' for Bush

``It's very good news for George W. Bush,'' Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, said Sunday after the Gallup poll was released. Brookings is a Washington- based public policy and politics research organization.

The only candidate in the past three decades who didn't get a boost was George McGovern, whose poll standings were unchanged after he received the Democratic Party's nomination in 1972. McGovern lost to former President Richard M. Nixon in the election.

``I don't think there was a bounce to get'' for Kerry, Dick Bennett, president of Manchester, New Hampshire-based American Research Group Inc., said in an interview. ``The race we have today is the race we're going to have after Labor Day and after the Republican convention.''

An American Research poll showed Kerry leads Bush 49 percent to 45 percent with independent candidate Ralph Nader, 70, supported by 2 percent. The survey of 776 registered voters was conducted July 30-Aug. 1 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Kerry gained 1 percentage point after the convention, according to the poll.

Battleground States

In 17 so-called battleground states that both candidates are most actively contesting, Kerry leads Bush 49 percent to 42 percent, according to a Marist survey of 385 registered voters conducted July 30-Aug. 2. It has an error margin of plus or minus 5 percentage points. The results showed Kerry widening his lead by 2 percentage points over a July battleground survey.

Too few voters were surveyed to draw conclusions about a specific battleground state, Barbara Carvalho, the poll's director, said in an e-mail statement.

Poughkeepsie, New York-based Marist defined battlegrounds as states Bush or Gore won by 7 percentage points or less in the 2000 election, including Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Missouri.

An Arizona Republic poll showed Bush ahead of Kerry 48 percent to 45 percent, a statistical tie. The statewide survey of 601 likely voters was conducted July 30-Aug. 1. Arizona has 10 electoral votes and Bush won the state by less than 7 percentage points in 2000.

State Polls

In New Jersey, Kerry widened his lead from 6 percentage points before the Democratic convention to 20 percentage points after, according to a poll conducted for the Newark Star-Ledger newspaper. A Quinnipiac University Poll conducted during the same period showed Kerry ahead by 13 points.

Gore carried New Jersey, which has 15 electoral votes, by 16 percentage points in 2000. The Star-Ledger surveyed 625 registered voters July 30-Aug. 4 and the poll has a 4 percentage point margin of error. The poll of 996 registered voters by Hamden, Connecticut-based Quinnipiac was conducted July 30-Aug. 2 and has an error margin of 3.1 percentage points.

Separate American Research surveys conducted Aug. 3-5 found Kerry leading Bush by 7 percentage points in Florida and New Hampshire, two battleground states in the election.

Support Among Democrats

``He's strengthened his support among Democrats, and you can logically conclude that the convention brought wayward Democrats back to Kerry,'' Bennett said.

In New Hampshire, 49 percent of likely voters surveyed August 3-5 said they would vote for Kerry if the election were held today, while 42 percent said they would vote for Bush, the American Research poll found. In Florida, 50 percent of likely voters polled on those same days said they would vote for Kerry, and 43 percent said they would vote for Bush.

The American Research polls both had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, and each surveyed 600 likely voters.

Support for Bush among registered voters in California dropped to the lowest in almost three years as close to two- thirds of those surveyed disapproved of his handling the war in Iraq, according to a poll by San Francisco-based Field Research Corp., which has published the Field (California) Poll since 1947.

Forty-one percent of respondents said they approved of Bush's performance overall, the lowest since just prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to the poll. Some 55 percent disapproved of his performance, the most since Bush took office. In Field's May survey, 43 percent approved and 52 percent disapproved.

Nationwide

A nationwide Marist poll shows Kerry backed by 45 percent, while 44 percent support Bush, the same lead Kerry held before the convention. Kerry received a bigger lift in a Newsweek magazine survey, stretching his lead over Bush from 3 points to 7 points. The poll of 1,010 registered voters was conducted July 29 through 30 and has a margin for error of 4 percentage points.

Kerry leads Bush 49 percent to 43 percent in a CBS poll of 1,052 registered voters. The survey has a 3 percentage point margin of error. Kerry had a 5-point lead before the convention.

An Associated Press poll, conducted by Paris-based Ipsos SA Aug. 3-5 among 798 registered voters, found Kerry gained 7 percentage points after the convention. Kerry went from trailing Bush 45 percent to 49 percent in July to having 48 percent to Bush's 45 percent last week. Kerry's advantage is within the 3.5 percentage point margin of error.

Kerry held a 6 percentage point lead among registered voters in a Washington Post/ABC News poll. The survey, which was conducted July 30-Aug. 1 among 1,200 adults, including 940 registered voters, has a 3 percentage point error margin. Before the convention Kerry trailed by 2 percentage points.

The Post poll found Kerry leading Bush among registered voters in which candidate is trusted more to handle five of eight issues: health care, education, the economy, international relations and taxes. The two candidates were about even on three other issues: Iraq, counterintelligence and terrorism.

Among likely voters, Kerry leads in only three of the eight: education, health care and international relations, according to the poll.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jesse Westbrook in Washington at jwestbrook1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 9, 2004 00:05 EDT