The New York City mayoral race is turning the bend with the first round primary only two weeks away. The current polling indicates a close race between Bill de Blasio (to my surprise), Christine Quinn, and Bill Thompson to make the top-2 runoff, which is required considering that no candidate will reach 40%. To me, the winner will be determined by knowing the answer to these five questions.

1. What is the ethnic makeup of the electorate?

A pattern emerged in the last round of polling: de Blasio led among whites, Quinn led among Latinos, and Thompson led among blacks. Given this split, it's important to know what percentage of each ethnicity/race will make up of the electorate.

The problem is pollsters cannot seem to agree on the question. Quinnipiac's last poll put whites at 40%, blacks at 35%, and Latinos at only 15%. Marist's had whites at 41%, blacks at 28%, and Latinos at 21%. The latter would bode better for Quinn given the current polling, while the prior would be a big boost for Thompson's campaign.

My own estimate is that Marist is closer to the mark here, though both might be a little high on the percentage of whites who show up.

2. Will blacks actually vote for Thompson?

Perhaps the biggest surprise of this campaign season has been the supposed lack of black support for Bill Thompson, the only African-American in the race. A recent Marist poll had him only at 22%. This would be highly unusual given the high amount of black support he got in the 2009 primary and general election. Even in her doomed campaign of 2005, C Virginia Fields won a third of black of voters.

A look at past polling biases shows that minority candidates do better in Democratic primaries in New York City than the final polls suggest. In addition, Thompson yanked in his highest percentage of black voters in the last Quinnipiac poll at 39%. The fact is he'll likely need that support in order to make the runoff.

My belief has been that he'll get it, though history is meant to be broken.

3. Does the New York Times endorsement of Quinn make a difference?

Newspaper endorsements don't usually matter, but the Times could be different. In fact, the only other paper I know that people believe holds the same sway is the Washington Post. Times readers are overwhelmingly Democratic and tend to be well-educated. In other words, they are prime voters in a Democratic primary for mayor.

These voters are de Blasio's base. While many of them will likely be unpersuaded by the Times, not everyone (much to my dismay) pays that close of attention to elections. And despite what the candidates like to claim, the ideological differences between them are not very large. Add on the fact that many voters choices aren't locked in, and it's the perfect recipe for a chunk of voters to be swayed an endorsement.

4. Do Sal Albanese + John Liu + Erick Salgado + Anthony Weiner's vote percentage equal 25%, 20%, or even less?

Christine Quinn has been at 24% +/- 3pt in 12 of the last 13 polls. In other words, she seems, at this point, to be stuck in neutral. It had seemed that getting at 25% would be enough to guarantee her a spot in the runoff. The reason is that the four candidates listed above were pulling in 25% of the vote, which meant that only de Blasio or Thompson, not both, could mathematically get over 25%.

The latest polling, however, indicates that Albanese, Liu, Salgado, and Weiner are not only falling short of 25%, but also 20%. Given that Quinn doesn't seem to be picking up any steam and with a decent percentage of the electorate undecided, it seems possible that both de Blasio and Thompson can pass her.

Keep in mind that Quinn hasn't been in any place but first or second in any poll over the past two years, though the last Quinnipiac poll was the closest she's come to not making the runoff.

5. Does anyone actually show up to this thing?

I don't think anyone has a clue about how many people vote on September 10th. A little less than 500,000 people showed up to vote in the last competitive Democratic primary for mayor in 2005. A little less than 800,000 showed up in 2001. In 2009, an uncompetitive primary produced only 330,000 voters.

The evidence suggests that a smaller turnout is probably best for Bill de Blasio and Bill Thompson. de Blasio's base of white well-educated liberals would show up in a blizzard, while Thompson has a lot of organizational support from unions and the few elected officials who actually hold sway over their communities.

Quinn's core Latino support is less reliable to show-up. Even in Marist's more optimistic Latino turnout model, the percentage they make up of the electorate falls from a registered to likely voter sample.

Conclusion

With two weeks to go, it's anybody's ball game in the New York City Mayoral race. If you know the answer to these five questions, you probably know who is still around after 10 September.