NYC Democrats Choose Their Candidates

(This beautiful image of New York City is by Daniel Schwen.)

The Democratic primary is over in New York City, and the mayor's race has come out just as predicted by the polls. Bill de Blasio is the big winner, and may even be able to avoid a run-off by getting 40% of the vote. With 97% of the precincts reporting, he has 40.2% of the vote. Here are the totals:

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY (MAYOR)
97% reporting

Bill de Blasio...............255,265 (40.2%)
William Thompson...............165,540 (26.1%)
Christine Quinn...............98,168 (15.5%)
John Liu...............44,711 (7.0%)
Anthony Weiner...............31,161 (4.9%)

Meanwhile, in the race for NYC Comptroller, Scott Stringer has defeated Eliot Spitzer in a squeaker. Stringer's margin of victory was about 23,000 votes out of more than 540,000 votes cast. This gives some credence to the Quinnipiac University Poll, which had Stringer leading by a small margin going into the final days of the election. By comparison, the usually accurate Public Policy Polling had given the edge to Spitzer. Here are the numbers in the Comptroller race:

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY (COMPTROLLER)
97% reporting

Scott Stringer...............283,152 (52.2%)
Eliot Spitzer...............259,740 (47.8%)

I must admit, I was a little surprised at the Comptroller race (even with the Quinnipiac numbers). I sort of expected Spitzer to pull it out. I was wrong.

But I was right about another prediction. I said it wouldn't surprise me if John Liu beat Anthony Weiner, even though Liu trailed him in the polls for the whole campaign -- and that's exactly what happened (by a pretty decent margin).

NOTE -- Joe Lhota won the Republican primary for mayor with 53% of the vote.