Nov. 5, 2013 9:10 p.m. ET
Bill de Blasio won the race for New York City mayor in a lopsided victory Tuesday night, becoming the first Democrat to capture City Hall in 24 years as part of a populist campaign that promised New Yorkers a clear break from Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration.
Edison Research, which conducts exit polls, called the race for Mr. de Blasio when polls closed in New York at 9 p.m. Preliminary precinct results weren't available.
Mr. de Blasio, the city's public advocate and a former City Council member from Brooklyn, defeated Republican nominee Joe Lhota, a former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Mr. de Blasio, 52 years old, will take office as the city's 109th mayor on Jan. 1.
Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio waves as he arrives to meet potential voters outside the Eastern Parkway subway station on Tuesday. Associated Press
The victory – one of the widest margins in a New York City mayoral election in the past century – reflected overwhelming support for Mr. de Blasio from virtually every demographic.
According to an Edison Research exit poll, 96% of black voters and 82% of Latino voters backed Mr. de Blasio. Mr. de Blasio won the support of 89% of Democrats, 14% of Republicans and nearly half of voters who are unaffiliated or belong to another party, the exit poll showed.
More than two-thirds of voters, 70%, said they wanted the incoming mayor to move the city in a different direction from Mr. Bloomberg, the exit poll said, and 85% of those who felt that way cast their ballot for Mr. de Blasio.
Next year, for the first time in two decades, Democrats will control both the executive and legislative branches of city government, ushering in what is expected to be a new era of left-leaning policies in the nation's largest city. Despite Democrats' six-to-one advantage in voter registration, the party's nominee has lost every mayoral election since David Dinkins, the city's first and only black mayor, won in 1989.
A proud liberal, Mr. de Blasio has pledged to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, increase income taxes on New Yorkers making more than $500,000 to pay for prekindergarten and after-school programs, and to make changes to the Police Department's controversial stop-and-frisk tactic that he says unfairly targets black and Latino men.
One of his top legislative priorities at City Hall is to expand the newly enacted sick-pay law, approved over Mr. Bloomberg's veto, so that many more workers will benefit from mandated sick pay. His top priority in Albany is to persuade lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who endorsed him, to pass his tax increase, a proposal that will prove to be an early test of the new mayor's political skills.
Mr. de Blasio would bring change to the upper echelons of city government, installing a new commissioner to run the nation's largest police department, a new chancellor to oversee the country's largest public school system and a new chairman to manage the continent's largest public-housing agency. Most of the city's department heads are expected to be replaced.
Tuesday's victory comes nearly eight years after Mr. de Blasio lost his bid to become council speaker to Christine Quinn, a stinging career defeat. But Mr. de Blasio successfully won his campaign for public advocate in 2009, and this year he climbed from the bottom of the polls to defeat Ms. Quinn and other well-known Democrats in September's primary.
In the general election, Mr. Lhota failed to gain traction, despite painting Mr. de Blasio as an untested manager who would make the city less and who lacks the experience and fiscal know-how to manage the city's $70 billion budget. Public polls showed Mr. Lhota behind by 40-plus percentage points from the get-go. Even on public safety, voters said they trusted Mr. de Blasio more than Mr. Lhota.
In Harlem, Terrance Gadet, a 60-year-old city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene employee, said Mr. de Blasio understands public transportation, affordability and schools because of personal experiences with his family. He said he voted for Mr. de Blasio because he represented the clearest repudiation of Mr. Bloomberg.
"Bloomberg was aloof and didn't understand the middle class," Mr. Gadet said.
Council Member Letitia James will succeed Mr. de Blasio as public advocate, becoming the first black woman to hold citywide office. And Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer will become the city's next comptroller. In the September primary, Mr. Stringer defeated former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who unsuccessfully sought a political comeback in the wake of his 2008 resignation amidst a prostitution scandal.
