Another New York City mayoral poll.

A new poll for the New York City races was released Thursday night, this one from Marist, yet another small East Coast college that does polling.(The earlier polls were from Qunnipiac and Siena, also small East Coast colleges.)

The latest poll, completed on August 14 sampling 679 Democrats, puts City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and public advocate Bill DiBlasio in a tie at 24% and former comptroller William Thompson in third with 16%.

The rules of the race are that if any single candidate polls over 40%, he or she is declared the winner and goes onto the general election. If not, the top two vote getters are in a run-off.

If the election were held when the poll was taken, one candidate getting over the 40% mark is highly unlikely, so it's really a race for the top two spots. A week ago, that looked like Quinn and Thompson, but the two polls this week say Quinn and DiBlasio. The event that is considered the turning point is the decision by a judge that "stop and frisk" policies are unconstitutional and DiBlasio's long held objection to the policy in New York City is his key advantage.

Marist also polled the Republican race, where Joe Lhota has a large lead but not polling over 40% yet. He could win without need for a run-off depending on how the undecided vote breaks, but he is not given a very good chance against whoever survives the Democratic race.

There will certainly be more polls between now and the election and I will give updates when available.