
Just an addition to this; the accepted answer did not work for me because the ListView itself does not have any padding set, it is set on the parent view (usually a LinearLayout). So instead, the following was necessary:
ListView lv = (ListView) findViewById(android.R.id.list);
ViewGroup parent = (ViewGroup)lv.getParent();
parent.setPadding(0, 0, 0, 0);