Unless the pollsters have all taken leave of their senses, Bill de Blasio is about to win re-election as New York’s mayor, probably by a wide margin. So it is not too soon for New Yorkers to focus on what they expect for his second term, the last one he is allowed under the city’s term-limits law.

While they’re at it, they may want to think hard about their own commitment to civic life. Democracy functions only if its citizens make it work. They do that by showing up on Election Day. But far too many of the city’s nearly 4.5 million registered voters are AWOL. Only 26 percent of them went to the polls in the 2013 mayoral election, and that turnout was spectacular compared with the dismal 14 percent in this year’s primaries. Even allowing that this campaign has hardly been rousing, the apathy is troublesome.

We supported Mr. de Blasio for the Democratic nomination in the September primaries because the city in the main has been well run on his watch. Nothing on that score has changed. Obviously, serious problems remain, with unrelenting homelessness and tottering mass transit high on the list. But, over all, Mr. de Blasio has been an able mayor who can point to an impressively low crime rate, sound municipal finances and progress on revivifying schools and on creating reasonably priced apartments.

And so we give him our endorsement in the general election on Tuesday.

His principal opponent is Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican who represents slices of Staten Island and Brooklyn. An unfamiliar figure in wide swaths of the five boroughs, Ms. Malliotakis has run a spirited campaign and deserves credit for it. But her ambition seems to outpace her vision for the city. And her resolute conservatism puts her out of sync with most New Yorkers — and us — on pivotal matters like raising the state minimum wage (she opposed it), legalizing same-sex marriage (she voted no on that, too, though she later expressed regret) and immigration policy (she is tepid on the “sanctuary city” concept).