The final weekend of campaigning in New York City capped an exhausting, and costly, political marathon as a crowd of hopefuls vied to succeed the city’s three-term mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg. All told, the mayoral candidates spent more than $ 50 million on their campaigns, according to the city’s Campaign Finance Board.
And in New Jersey, the race for governor entered its final weekend as lopsided as it had started. Gov. Chris Christie, who has dominated the polls throughout the campaign, was traveling the state on a bus tour that he promised would take him to all 21 counties before Election Day.
Bill de Blasio, the Democratic mayoral nominee, and Mr. Christie have little in common other than their seemingly improbable popularity, which has proved to be a huge obstacle for their lesser-known opponents, both of whom are hoping that voters will reconsider in the final days before Tuesday’s voting.
With a victory on Election Day, Mr. de Blasio, ascending from political obscurity to the mayoralty of the nation’s largest city, would instantly become one of the country’s most prominent liberal officeholders. Mr. Christie, widely viewed as a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination in 2016, would cement his status as the rare Republican able to thrive in a Democratic-leaning state.
Mr. de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, on Saturday planned to warn his supporters against complacency and urge them to go to the polls, scheduling rallies on the Upper West Side and in Lower Manhattan. Safeguarding his lead, he has done relatively little retail campaigning in the weeks since his victory in the Sept. 10 primary.
Mr. de Blasio’s Republican opponent, Joseph J. Lhota, a former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, began Saturday on the Upper East Side to highlight a topic that he hopes will bring him votes: his opposition to building a waste transfer station in the neighborhood.
Surrounded by supporters holding signs that read, “Stop the dump,” Mr. Lhota repeatedly criticized Mr. de Blasio for supporting the waste transfer station, suggesting he was “pandering and lying.”
After speaking with reporters, Mr. Lhota handed out pins to voters and tossed a football to a young boy. He said he was confident he would prevail on Tuesday, and that he believed he had wide support even among Democrats. “I’m as optimistic as I ever have been,” he said.
Trying to target voters who might have reservations about Mr. de Blasio’s liberalism, Mr. Lhota has spent considerable time in communities with concentrations of conservatives, including in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods and on Staten Island; on Saturday he planned to do both, visiting an Orthodox congregation on Staten Island.
After a lengthy and at times chaotic primary, the mayoral race is wrapping up with relatively little hubbub. In survey after survey conducted after the primary, Mr. de Blasio has held a commanding lead over Mr. Lhota.
The most recent New York Times/Siena College poll found Mr. de Blasio with a lead of 45 percentage points among likely voters, suggesting Tuesday’s contest could be among the most lopsided in decades.
Turnout in New York City is expected to be low. In 2009, when Mr. Bloomberg won re-election, fewer than 1.2 million people voted, the lowest turnout for a mayoral election in decades. Jerry Skurnik, a veteran political consultant, said he expected the turnout on Tuesday to be similar.
In New Jersey, Mr. Christie spent Friday at diners and outdoor rallies in the northern part of the state, where he was hoping to win counties he had lost in 2009. He was joined at several stops by former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who also campaigned with Mr. Lhota that day.
Mr. Christie’s Democratic challenger, State Senator Barbara Buono, on Saturday morning spoke to supporters at a banquet hall in Paterson, N.J. She was joined by New Jersey’s newest United States senator, Cory A. Booker, a Democrat.
Urging voters to go to the polls on Tuesday, Ms. Buono devoted most of her time to criticizing Mr. Christie.
“The choice is that you stay home and you acquiesce and accept a governor whose economic policies enrich only the wealthy and cripple the middle class and the working poor,” Ms. Buono said, “or you get out the vote.”
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