Mayoral race: Keys to City Hall

The two top prizes in next Tuesday's New York City Democratic mayoral primary -- where win and place both matter -- remain up for grabs among three leading contenders, an amNY-News 12 poll suggests.

Wild as the election ride has already been, these new numbers show room for movement as broadcast ads, mailings and get-out-the-vote calls reach a fever pitch around the city.

One-third of these Democrats' proclaimed supporters said they're not strongly committed or only "leaning."

The numbers from the survey by Penn Schoen Berland show Public Advocate Bill de Blasio striving to hold his ballyhooed lead, ex-Comptroller Bill Thompson angling for a runoff spot and Council Speaker Christine Quinn struggling to stay in the hunt to succeed her longtime ally, 12-year Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

With an Oct. 1 runoff between the first- and second-place finishers still viewed as likely, the longer-term picture is even more in flux, the numbers suggest.

Looking past the primaries, pollster Mike Berland stressed that a significant 36 percent of likely Democratic voters surveyed said if their preferred candidate failed to make the general election, they'd consider turning to a Republican, an independent or a third-party candidate in November.

In the Republican primary, the clear front-runner, former Metropolitan Transit Authority Chairman Joe Lhota, looks to fend off any unexpected surge from his next-closest competitor, billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis.

Glancing back at the recent past renders this snapshot all the more vivid. For months, Quinn drew an aura of inevitability, and some early surveys even showed her with a chance to net the 40 percent needed to win without a runoff.

After Anthony Weiner announced in May, he shot to the top of the stack, though even then his support did appear soft and celebrity-driven.

Now de Blasio pulls 29 percent to Thompson's 24 percent, with Quinn at 17 percent and Weiner having buckled to 10 percent. Comptroller John Liu and two others lag in single digits.

How did we get here? Of a notable 42 percent of Democrats supporting a candidate who said they'd changed their minds during this primary campaign, 27 percent said they ditched Weiner, 23 percent moved away from Quinn and 17 percent came out of the "undecided" category.

"Quinn doesn't have a natural base," Berland said. "Women don't necessarily vote for women. It's not a constant you can take to the bank." At this point, he said, her only chance for success rests with the message: "Do you guys really want Bill de Blasio?"

As for Weiner, Berland said, "He undid himself with unforced errors."

Lhota, a former deputy to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, leads big among registered Republicans. Berland said that while Catsimatidis built up his name recognition, "he never told us why he should be mayor."

The poll also reflects a clear sense of Bloomberg fatigue. Although 55 percent of Democrats said they approved, either strongly or somewhat, of the job he's been doing as mayor, 77 percent said it was "time for a change."

Berland calls especially noteworthy the poll's finding that the mayor's ballyhooed 2002 takeover of the schools from the former Board of Education gets only 49 percent approval from Republicans and 30 percent approval form Democrats. He has said that the success of his administration should be judged based on the state of public education.

There was 61 percent approval for his controversial stop-and-frisk program among Republicans, but only 23 percent among Democrats. The ban on smoking in public places that once sparked an uproar polled at an impressive 76 percent among Democrats and 67 percent from Republicans.

The pre-mayoral Bloomberg was a Democrat. But to sidestep the party's fractious primary, he enrolled and ran as a Republican in 2001. By the time he ran for a suddenly-legal third term, he'd dropped his GOP affiliation, although recouping the party line in the 2009 election.

Democrats outnumber Republicans 6-1 in the five boroughs. The likely GOP voter, as you might expect, differs in priorities from his or her Democratic counterpart -- by rating crime and public safety as higher priorities versus jobs, education and housing for the bigger party, according to the poll.

Geared to the primaries, the poll did not question unaffiliated city voters eligible to vote in November. Two GOP-endorsed candidates -- Bloomberg and Giuliani -- have won the last five mayoral elections by drawing on crucial numbers of crossover Democrats and independent "blanks" who total more than 750,000. The Republican nominee's aim this time will be the same, if not the result.

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Scroll down for detailed results from the amNewYork-News 12 poll of the Democratic and Republican primary races for New York City mayor.

The Democratic primary poll, conducted Aug. 22-27, surveyed 600 likely Democratic primary voters via landline and cellphone and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Staten Island is not shown because the statistical sampling was too small.

Scroll down for detailed results from the amNewYork-News 12 poll of the Republican primary race for New York City mayor. The poll, conducted Aug. 22-27, surveyed 400 likely Republican primary voters via landline and cellphone and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

The Bronx is not shown because the statistical sampling was too small.