Which struck me as one of those pieces of data that is perfectly valid and interesting, yet of limited practical use, considering this has been such a sleeper of a race without much indication that anyone or anything will stop Bloomberg from winning a third term.

Does the poll mean that the conventional wisdom is horribly wrong?

The short answer: no.

The poll showed Bloomberg had a job approval rating of 60-34 percent and a positive/negative rating of 48-26 percent. Respondents disapproved of the mayor's extension of term limits by 58-37 percent, and they were unsatisfied with the quality of public schools to the tune of 54-31 percent.

The poll also showed that Bill Thompson had a 13-2 percent favorability rating, and that 80 percent of respondents were either undecided or did not know enough about him to comment.

It should be noted that the poll was conducted from May 29 to June 3, around the time Bloomberg was mostly getting attention by stepping on his message. Also, it was a survey of 683 New Yorkers – not registered voters or likely voters.

The consensus among number-crunchers I spoke to is that the poll is worth taking note of, but that Bloomberg is still in the same commanding position as he was before it was revealed that New Yorkers are, in the abstract, tired of him.

“The odds of Michael Bloomberg losing are really, really slim,” said Doug Muzzio, a professor at Baruch. He said that the bad news for “Bill Thompson is that nobody knows him, and to get known, he has to spend Bloomberg-type of money, which he doesn’t have.”

David Birdsell, the dean of the School of Public Affairs at Baruch, looked at the poll, and said New Yorkers "don’t see another person they’d rather see in office besides Michael Bloomberg."

Joseph Mercurio said having people not like Bloomberg isn’t enough to win an election. Those voters need to be convinced to show up and vote, which, so far, they’re probably not going to do, he said.

“They have nobody to vote for, so they stay home,” Mercurio predicted. That is, “unless Thompson can figure out a way to get earned media and pound on those people who are angry at Bloomberg.”

His point gets at the heart of the problem, according to Mickey Blum, which is that it’s important to note Blooomberg’s numbers in comparison to an actual opponent.

“I think the mayor is in no trouble because people in the abstract would like to have someone else, an unnamed someone else. When it’s in the abstract, the unnamed person sounds wonderful. It’s not like they can come up with someone else,” she said. But, “you put any other name in there, and they say they’ll vote for Bloomberg.”

Pollster Peter Feld also didn’t take much stock in Bloomberg’s numbers versus a hypothetical opponent.

In an email, Feld said “(the very question is slightly slanted against incumbents when it says "give a new person a chance") -- I've seen plenty of incumbents with a 40% reelect number easily reelected.”

As for what to keep an eye on, Blum says it’s not Bloomberg’s personal approval rating, but rather, quality of life and crime numbers.

In a follow-up email, Blum wrote, “Most people said the overall quality of life in NYC is better or the same, and crime is down or the same, under Bloomberg. That’s far more important to most New York voters than term limits. New Yorkers don’t like what the Mayor did with term limits, they think less of him because of it, but term limits won’t be the issue that matters in the voting booth.”

Feld said, “Ultimately, elections are based on expectations of what someone will do in the next four years, not a reward for past performance, so the key thing is that Bloomberg maintains his job approval rating which is huge considering all his liabilities and the burnout factor reported in the story. Of course this poll will embolden his consultants to shake loose even more money! Though I doubt it tells them anything they don't know.”

Schoen, speaking at a forum about presidential polling at Baruch College, was answering a question from an audience member who wanted to know which of the two major parties would be most affected by a Bloomberg presidential run.

“Let me just say at the outset I don’t think he is going to run,” Schoen said. “Largely Phil’s question is an academic one. It was very interesting to me that at this point, he appears to be hurting the Republicans at least as much if not more than the Democrats. I think the reason for that has more to do with disaffected Republicans who probably don’t want to vote, at this point, for Hillary Clinton--who hear, you know, Independent Michael Bloomberg, don’t know much about who Michael Bloomberg is, and are saying, ‘You know what, we don’t want to vote Republican, and this is an alternative.”

“So,“ Schoen concluded, “that would be my answer to your, what I think is hypothetical, question.”

A few minutes after that question, Schoen put his two Blackberries into his pocket, leaned to his right and was heard telling the moderator, pollster Mickey Blum, that he had to leave. (“You said 7:30.”)

The other panelists included Kellyanne Conway, a pollster now working with Fred Thompson, and Mickey Carroll of Quinnipiac. Another scheduled panelist did not arrive.

Afterwards, Blum said Schoen’s characterization of Bloomberg’s presidential run stems from Bloomberg’s public denials. “He may not know himself” Blum told me.

“It was a diplomatic and gentlemanly response from someone who is both,” Conway said.

A trim man in shorts and sneakers, with a number on his shirt, walked up to the Senator, shook his hand and wished him good luck. Only later was the Senator informed that the man was his opponent, an obscure State Assemblyman named Howard Mills.

That November, Mr. Schumer broke the state’s record for an electoral margin, receiving an astonishing 71 percent of the vote.

Two years later, Senator Hillary Clinton finds herself facing an opponent who may well be as weak and little known as Mr. Schumer’s 2004 victim. But Mrs. Clinton isn’t running to set records: Her results, instead, will be a judged by Democratic Presidential primary voters concerned about her ability to defeat John McCain or another Republican for President in 2008.

And the expectations game is already well underway, with Mrs. Clinton facing several measures by which her ability to persuade the center will be evaluated: Will she get at least 60 percent of the vote? Will she carry the Ohio-like precincts of western and central New York? Will she trail other Democratic candidates, perhaps Eliot Spitzer, who figures to be the party’s gubernatorial candidate?

“She has to get 60 percent of the vote at least—if someone hits 40 against her, she’s damaged,” said Utica-based pollster John Zogby. Mr. Zogby said he has seen voters who used to say they had an “unfavorable” view of her move into the “favorable” category, and that more recently some who had held “strongly unfavorable views” were moderating. (In an earlier round of the expectations game, Mr. Zogby inadvertently helped make Mrs. Clinton’s easy victory in 2000—winning 56 percent of the vote—a stunner as he produced a steady drumbeat of polls for the New York Post that predicted her defeat. “These things happen,” he explained.)

Another pollster, Mickey Blum, said that Mrs. Clinton’s performance relative to other Democrats would be the key.

“I think that the thing that she may be concerned about, rather than a number, is how her numbers end up comparing to the other people who are running for the other statewide offices, and especially Spitzer,” Ms. Blum said. “If she gets 60 percent and he gets 70 percent, people will say, ‘Yeah, well, great, you won—but he brought you along.’ She doesn’t want to look like she’s riding on his coattails.”

Ms. Blum’s most recent poll, for NY1 News and Newsday, had Mrs. Clinton’s likely challenger, former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, winning 30 percent of the vote. Pollsters believe that figure represents a hard core of reflexively Republican or anti-Clinton voters who are certain to vote for Mr. Spencer or another Republican nominee.

“Unless Al Sharpton endorses [Mr. Spencer], there’s nothing she can do” to reduce his vote, said a Democratic strategist.

This is the notorious expectations game, one that Mrs. Clinton’s advisors shrug off on the assumption that she can’t win such a media-driven contest.

“No matter what our final tally is, there will be those who will say its not enough. So we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it,” said Howard Wolfson, an advisor to Mrs. Clinton.

The numbers game, however, will call for strategic choices about how she runs her campaign: Should she, like Mr. Schumer, pump millions of dollars into expensive television advertising in New York? Or should she continue to invest in what is essentially a shadow Presidential campaign, with a national fund-raising network and a deep, expensive staff?

“I would think she would want to win comfortably—I think they’d even be satisfied in the high 50’s,” said a Democratic pollster, Joel Benenson, who downplayed the national importance of her margin. “The question is how much do you need to win convincingly in New York—and then, once you hit that point, do you want to spend more money?”

Upstate Myths?

At the heart of the issue is an argument that Mrs. Clinton’s performance this year— particularly upstate—is a test of her national potential. When The New Republic headlined a piece earlier this year “Hillary’s Upstate Myth,” her Democratic skeptics seized on its dual (and slightly contradictory) argument: “[U]pstate New York is not that conservative. Clinton hasn’t done all that well here—in fact, she lost the region in 2000 and remains a highly polarizing figure.”

But the very fact that she did as well as she did in the region six years ago came as a surprise to many analysts. And while nobody expects her to win over conservatives, her appeal to moderates will be tested in comparing her results this year with the 2000 figures in specific suburbs and upstate communities.

“She just needs to show—which she can—that she can win in areas where nobody thought she should,” said Ms. Blum. “That she can win in upstate counties, and that she can win in places where nobody gave her a chance and among people who she never expected.”

Of course, the standards of proof in the business of managing political expectation can be a bit elusive.

“It’s all about spin,” Ms. Blum said.

Mr. Schumer—now the white whale of New York electoral politics—is wishing her luck.

“Senator Schumer hopes she does as well as possible,” said the Senator’s spokesman, Risa Heller. She noted that Mr. Schumer is chair of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, the chief fund-raiser for Democratic Senate candidates. In that capacity, Ms. Heller said, Mr. Schumer will “do everything he can to make that happen.”

A trim man in shorts and sneakers, with a number on his shirt, walked up to the Senator, shook his hand and wished him good luck. Only later was the Senator informed that the man was his opponent, an obscure State Assemblyman named Howard Mills.

That November, Mr. Schumer broke the state’s record for an electoral margin, receiving an astonishing 71 percent of the vote.

Two years later, Senator Hillary Clinton finds herself facing an opponent who may well be as weak and little known as Mr. Schumer’s 2004 victim. But Mrs. Clinton isn’t running to set records: Her results, instead, will be a judged by Democratic Presidential primary voters concerned about her ability to defeat John McCain or another Republican for President in 2008.

And the expectations game is already well underway, with Mrs. Clinton facing several measures by which her ability to persuade the center will be evaluated: Will she get at least 60 percent of the vote? Will she carry the Ohio-like precincts of western and central New York? Will she trail other Democratic candidates, perhaps Eliot Spitzer, who figures to be the party’s gubernatorial candidate?

“She has to get 60 percent of the vote at least—if someone hits 40 against her, she’s damaged,” said Utica-based pollster John Zogby. Mr. Zogby said he has seen voters who used to say they had an “unfavorable” view of her move into the “favorable” category, and that more recently some who had held “strongly unfavorable views” were moderating. (In an earlier round of the expectations game, Mr. Zogby inadvertently helped make Mrs. Clinton’s easy victory in 2000—winning 56 percent of the vote—a stunner as he produced a steady drumbeat of polls for the New York Post that predicted her defeat. “These things happen,” he explained.)

Another pollster, Mickey Blum, said that Mrs. Clinton’s performance relative to other Democrats would be the key.

“I think that the thing that she may be concerned about, rather than a number, is how her numbers end up comparing to the other people who are running for the other statewide offices, and especially Spitzer,” Ms. Blum said. “If she gets 60 percent and he gets 70 percent, people will say, ‘Yeah, well, great, you won—but he brought you along.’ She doesn’t want to look like she’s riding on his coattails.”

Ms. Blum’s most recent poll, for NY1 News and Newsday, had Mrs. Clinton’s likely challenger, former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, winning 30 percent of the vote. Pollsters believe that figure represents a hard core of reflexively Republican or anti-Clinton voters who are certain to vote for Mr. Spencer or another Republican nominee.

“Unless Al Sharpton endorses [Mr. Spencer], there’s nothing she can do” to reduce his vote, said a Democratic strategist.

This is the notorious expectations game, one that Mrs. Clinton’s advisors shrug off on the assumption that she can’t win such a media-driven contest.

“No matter what our final tally is, there will be those who will say its not enough. So we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it,” said Howard Wolfson, an advisor to Mrs. Clinton.

The numbers game, however, will call for strategic choices about how she runs her campaign: Should she, like Mr. Schumer, pump millions of dollars into expensive television advertising in New York? Or should she continue to invest in what is essentially a shadow Presidential campaign, with a national fund-raising network and a deep, expensive staff?

“I would think she would want to win comfortably—I think they’d even be satisfied in the high 50’s,” said a Democratic pollster, Joel Benenson, who downplayed the national importance of her margin. “The question is how much do you need to win convincingly in New York—and then, once you hit that point, do you want to spend more money?”

Upstate Myths?

At the heart of the issue is an argument that Mrs. Clinton’s performance this year— particularly upstate—is a test of her national potential. When The New Republic headlined a piece earlier this year “Hillary’s Upstate Myth,” her Democratic skeptics seized on its dual (and slightly contradictory) argument: “[U]pstate New York is not that conservative. Clinton hasn’t done all that well here—in fact, she lost the region in 2000 and remains a highly polarizing figure.”

But the very fact that she did as well as she did in the region six years ago came as a surprise to many analysts. And while nobody expects her to win over conservatives, her appeal to moderates will be tested in comparing her results this year with the 2000 figures in specific suburbs and upstate communities.

“She just needs to show—which she can—that she can win in areas where nobody thought she should,” said Ms. Blum. “That she can win in upstate counties, and that she can win in places where nobody gave her a chance and among people who she never expected.”

Of course, the standards of proof in the business of managing political expectation can be a bit elusive.

“It’s all about spin,” Ms. Blum said.

Mr. Schumer—now the white whale of New York electoral politics—is wishing her luck.

“Senator Schumer hopes she does as well as possible,” said the Senator’s spokesman, Risa Heller. She noted that Mr. Schumer is chair of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, the chief fund-raiser for Democratic Senate candidates. In that capacity, Ms. Heller said, Mr. Schumer will “do everything he can to make that happen.”