Bloomberg wins third term as New York mayor

NEW YORK: New York has elected billionaire Michael Bloomberg to a third four-year term as mayor.

Bloomberg, who spent more than $100 million of his own money on the campaign, took 51 percent of the vote to 46 percent for Democratic challenger William Thompson.

Bloomberg, a former Republican who ran as an independent candidate, has been a popular manager of New York's economy and was credited with reducing crime for the last eight years.

But he drew controversy by asking the City Council to change the laws and extend mayoral term limits from two to three. In referendums, voters had rejected the idea of extending term limits in the 1990s.

The election result was closer than expected. Opinion polls ahead of the vote put the 67-year-old Bloomberg 12 percentage points ahead of Thompson, 56.

Bloomberg's personal wealth is estimated at $16 billion, fuelled by the namesake financial news service he founded decades ago.

Bloomberg was first elected mayor in the wake of the Sep 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that left more than 2,700 people dead in New York, destroyed the World Trade Center towers and inflicted tens of billions of dollars in damage to the city's infrastructure, Wall Street firms and jobs.