Metro

Bloomberg sweats out third term

The mayoral race turned into an unexpected squeaker last night, with Mayor Bloomberg barely edging past Democratic rival Bill Thompson to win a third term.

Fueled by a self-funded $100 million war chest, Bloomberg was widely expected to crush his underfunded opponent — becoming only the fourth New York City mayor in history to achieve the third-term milestone.

But with 100 percent of the vote in, Bloomberg had a mere 5-point victory — 51 percent to Thompson’s 46.

Virtually every public poll predicted the mayor would triumph by double digits, 12 to 15 points.

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With the early numbers coming in neck-and-neck, the mayor’s inner circle retreated from the ballroom of his election night headquarters at the Sheraton New York for a private huddle with Bloomberg, who had already prepared a victory speech.

Howard Wolfson, the mayor’s chief campaign spokesman, later tried as best as he could to downplay the disappointing results.

“Whether it’s 4 points or 7 points, Mike Bloomberg is going to be the next mayor,” he said.

One prominent political consultant took a darker view.

“It probably means those are the most expensive 5 points in American history,” the consultant said of the thin winning margin.

“What it says is he’s probably going to be like every third-term mayor — in trouble from Day One.”

THE VOTERS’ MESSAGE

BLOOMBERG’S MISSION

Emboldened by the closer-than-expected numbers, Public Advocate-elect Bill de Blasio immediately signaled that the mayor needs to watch his political back.

“You’ll see a lot of strong voices as checks and balances,” promised de Blasio. “It will be a very different experience than what he experienced the last eight years.”

Bloomberg didn’t acknowledge how close the race was, saying only in his victory speech that it was “hard fought.”

He pointed out how incumbents around the nation were booted last night while “New Yorkers have defied tonight’s trend.”

Thompson’s concession was unusually upbeat for a guy who lost.

“I leave tonight feeling exceedingly proud of the work we did together,” he told cheering supporters, who appeared elated that they had made Bloomberg sweat.

COMPLETE RESULTS: NYC

COMPLETE RESULTS: METRO

Term limits, extended by a divided City Council under intense prodding by the mayor, formed the underpinning of Thompson’s uphill campaign and it proved to be formidable.

While pollsters insisted it wouldn’t provide Thompson with the mileage he needed to overcome an entrenched and seemingly popular incumbent, many voters had different ideas.

“I wasn’t crazy about Bloomberg running for a third term,” said Craig Hobbs, a 41-year-old computer consultant who voted for Thompson in Kew Gardens, Queens. “It’s time for a change.”

On the Upper East Side, writer Tia Kaplan, 35, cast a protest vote against the term-limits extension by lining up with fringe candidate Jimmy McMillan on the Rent is Too High Party, denying the mayor what would under normal circumstances be a certain vote.

Turnout was low, about 200,000 short of the 1.3 million voters who trooped to the polls in 2005, when Bloomberg turned back Democrat Freddy Ferrer by 20 points.

Bloomberg ended up losing that mostly minority borough by more than 30,000 votes.

Nervous mayoral aides expressed concern that the large number of Asian-Americans who flocked to vote for winning Democratic comptroller candidate John Liu, who became the first citywide official of Asian descent, would have an impact on the mayoral race.

The thinking went that once they finished pulling the lever for Liu, it wouldn’t be too hard to move up one notch and do the same for Thompson. Also elected last night was Cy Vance Jr., as Manhattan district attorney.

Thompson campaign manager Eddy Castell told reporters before any results were in that Bloomberg’s negative ad blitz “turned off a lot of voters” and that he had always anticipated that far fewer voters would show up compared to 2005.

With an estimated net worth of $17.5 billion, Bloomberg was looking at pumping more than $100 million into his self-financed campaign, surpassing the $85 million he spent in 2005 and $74 million in 2001.

Thompson — who came within 50,000 votes of pulling off the upset of the decade — got by with less than $10 million.

Additional reporting by Carl Campanile and Jennifer Fermino

david.seifman@nypost.com