Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg won re-election yesterday in a tighter race than public opinion polls had projected, becoming the first three-term chief executive of the largest U.S. city by population since 1989.

Bloomberg, running on the Republican and Independence Party lines, beat Democratic city Comptroller William Thompson, 51 percent to 46 percent, with all of the city’s 6,110 election districts counted, according to unofficial results tabulated by the Associated Press. Polls in the campaign’s final week found Bloomberg ahead by at least 10 percentage points.

Bloomberg’s victory gave him another four years to begin balancing a city budget with a projected $5 billion deficit in the fiscal year beginning July 1, while making good on promises to improve schools and municipal services. New York’s unemployment rate rose to 10.3 percent in September from 6 percent a year earlier.

“While we can’t fix the national recession, we can and we will get our city through these tough times and we’ll come out stronger than ever,” Bloomberg said. “We’re going to show we can keep outperforming the rest of the country.”

Thompson conceded shortly after 11 p.m., thanking his campaign staff and volunteers and offering Bloomberg his congratulations.

“Your support, your enthusiasm and desire for change is what carried me to this point,” he told the crowd. “This campaign was about standing strong, standing tall, and never backing down in the face of a formidable challenge.”

Prior Polls

Bloomberg’s 4.6 point victory margin was inconsistent with public opinion polls released in the closing week of the campaign. His lead was 12 percentage points in a Nov. 2 Quinnipiac University survey and 15 points in an Oct. 30 Marist College poll.

“The polls didn’t measure intensity,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College in Manhattan. “Bloomberg’s problem was that the people who liked him didn’t feel as strongly as the people who were unhappy. In low turn-out elections, the people who feel most intensely dominate.”

In New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie denied incumbent Jon Corzine a second term as governor, 49 percent to 45 percent, in a contest that polls released Nov. 2 showed as a statistical tie. Republican Robert McDonnell won the Virginia governor’s race, defeating R. Creigh Deeds, 59 percent to 41 percent. Incumbent Timothy Kaine was barred by term-limit law from seeking re-election.

About 1.1 million voters turned out for the New York City election, 200,000 less than in 2005 when Bloomberg won his second term, beating former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer by 250,000 votes, 57 percent to 38 percent.

Power of Incumbency

“A spread between the two of less than 5 points is not typical for an incumbent election,” said Joseph Mercurio, a political consultant who has worked for Democrats and Republicans. “It indicates that Bloomberg really did have to spend all that money.”

Aside from the advantages of incumbency, Bloomberg, 67, benefited from a treasury that totaled more than $85 million 10 days before election, breaking a national record for a personally financed campaign.

Bloomberg spent his tens of millions of dollars campaigning as a political independent and assailing Thompson, 56, by characterizing his past service as a Board of Education president as a failure, as well as his acceptance of campaign contributions from managers of pension funds that Thompson supervised, as “politics as usual.”

Term Limits

The mayor, whose wealth Forbes magazine estimated last month at $17.5 billion, is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News.

He gained the ability to run for re-election last year after persuading the City Council to change the law and remove a restriction that limited officials to two, four-year terms.

Bloomberg vowed to continue to reduce crime after eight years in which it fell 35 percent, improve the city’s environment by planting 1 million trees, build affordable housing and pursue an ambitious public health agenda that during his first two terms included bans on smoking in the workplace and use of trans fats in processed food.

The tight vote might prove problematic for Bloomberg in governing the city during the next four years, Sherrill said. Several council members that supported Bloomberg’s effort to abolish term limits lost bids for re-election in the September primary election, he noted.

Mayoral Opposition

Newly elected Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and city Comptroller John Liu, the first Asian to win citywide office, both Democrats who opposed Bloomberg on term limits, have mayoral ambitions, Sherrill said.

“The lesson is that there’s peril in supporting the mayor and less risk in challenging him, so the close vote will embolden people to be independent of the mayor and question his agenda,” Sherrill said.

At the Sheraton New York hotel in Manhattan campaign workers enjoyed miniature hamburgers and watched five television monitors displaying reports declaring the race closer than expected.

Democratic U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner, who decided against running against Bloomberg in May, said Thompson benefited from voter resentment of tax increases and the mayor’s overturning of term limits.

“Thompson has a better sense of the notion of helping to lift up the middle class,” Weiner said.

Newspaper Endorsements

Bloomberg received endorsements from each of the city’s four major daily newspapers -- the New York Times, the Daily News, the New York Post and the Staten Island Advance -- and from dozens of neighborhood and ethnic newspapers. Former Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat who has a radio show on Bloomberg Radio, supported him, as did several Democratic city council members.

Thompson won backing from about 30 labor organizations including the city’s largest municipal labor union, District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 125,000 city workers and 50,000 retirees; the Uniform Firefighters Association, and the Transportation Workers Union.

The United Federation of Teachers remained neutral.

Bloomberg’s re-election makes him the fourth three-term mayor for the city in the past 100 years. Ed Koch was mayor from 1978 to 1989; Fiorello LaGuardia served from 1934 to 1945 and Robert Wagner Jr., from 1954 to 1965.

To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York City Hall at hgoldman@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 4, 2009 01:36 EST