Vote Count Officially Completed for New York City Primary

almost three weeks after new york city's primary for mayor, election officials have finished counting votes, and bill de blasio has avoided a runoff. mr. de blasio, a democrat, finished with 40.81% of the votes. he exceeded the 40% threshold by about 5,600 votes.

the september 10 election showed de blasio with a little over 40% of the vote. but tens of thousands of paper ballots remained to be examined, leaving a plethora of unanswered questions about whether or not a runoff would be necessary.

bill thompson finished in second-place with 26.14% of the vote. thompson reluctantly conceded six days after the primary. he also criticized the city's board of elections, stating the pace of the vote count left him with no reasonable way to wage a viable campaign given the uncertainty of the election results.

in four of the five boroughs, election officials finished tallying votes two weeks after the primary. the results from manhattan were certified three days after the other boroughs were done, a board of elections spokesman said. christine quinn, city council speaker garnered 15.74% of the vote, john liu, city comptroller had 6.84% and anthony weiner, former congressman had 4.94%. 

in the republican primary for mayor, joe lhota, former chairman of the metropolitan transit authority, won with 52.75% of the vote. lhota was followed by john catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the gristedes supermarket chain with 40.69% and george mcdonald, the founder of the doe fund, with 6.38%.

tuesday, october 1, there will only be one race on the ballot: a runoff for the democratic nomination for public advocate between councilwoman letitia james and state senator daniel squadron. overall, voter turnout was small, as expected, roughly 22%. about 692,000 of the city's 2.97 million registered democrats voted, or 23%. among republicans, the turnout was even less. about 61,000 of the city's 471,000 republicans voted, or 13%.