US President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger John Kerry are running neck and neck in public support at the beginning of the Republican National Convention, with Kerry's earlier gains made at his party's Boston convention largely erased, a new poll issued Tuesday showed.

According to the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Bush and Kerry each claimed 48 percent of likely voters, virtually unchanged from a survey taken immediately after the Democratic convention held late last month.

Meanwhile, 48 percent of the registered voters questioned in the survey said they would vote for Bush while 47 percent said they would vote for Kerry, a shift in the president's direction since the previous survey.

The new poll confirms the suggestion by other recent surveys which said that despite clear dissatisfaction about the direction of the country, Bush has regained ground lost to Kerry on nationalsecurity issues.

A slight majority of registered voters, 53 percent, said Bush is more qualified than Kerry to be a commander-in-chief, while 43 percent said they prefer the Democratic nominee.

At the end of the Democratic convention late last month, Kerry enjoyed an eight-point advantage over Bush on that question.

Taken together, the results of the poll suggest that Bush's recent gains have come from eroding perceptions of Kerry and not as a consequence of improved views of Bush's performance as president, the Washington Post said.

The poll was conducted among 1,207 randomly selected registeredand likely voters between August 26-29 and has a margin of error of three percentage points.

Source: Xinhua