The election to designate a new Boston mayor is Tuesday and finally, after a race that has remained locked in a dead-heat throughout its entirety, one man will emerge as the successor to incumbent Mayor Tom Menino. But what’s been truly noteworthy about this race and has, at times, overshadowed both candidates, as well as their respective platforms, is how close the race actually is, and has been. Preliminary votes are almost always neck-and-neck, but what does that mean for our two current candidates?

Typically, preliminary voter turnouts are disappointingly low and eke out two candidates to contend for mayor by a rather slim margin. On election day, though, citizens flock to the polls in hordes and often elect their municipal helmsman by much wider bounds.

But this doesn’t always happen. And in other cities, the election results vary drastically.

A few items to consider here: In the September 24 preliminary, Marty Walsh bested runner-up John Connolly by a mere margin of 1 percent. The last time a preliminary was this close was back in 1983 when Ray Flynn bettered challenger Mel King by .04 percent. Flynn went on to win the election by almost double, ousting King 65.07 percent to 34.93 percent.

And while a win in the preliminaries often foreshadows who will take home a ‘W’ in the general election, that isn’t always so. At least, it wasn’t for John Collins and Kevin White. Both Collins and White came in second at the preliminaries during their first runs at City Hall in 1959 and 1967, respectively. Collins lost by a 33 percent to 21 percent margin, while White lost 28 percent to 19 percent. Both ended up winning the office, with Collins beating John E. Powers 55-44 percent and White beating Louise Day Hicks 53-46 percent.

White would win the mayoral election a total of four times. In his final run, he would take 54.82 percent of the general election vote, the lowest for any Boston mayoral elect since Tom Menino in 2009 where he garnered 57.27 percent. During that time span, each Mayor would win with at least 60 percent of the general vote, some gaining as much as 70 percent.

But are mayoral election statistics this close with other major cities around the country?

In each of his three victories, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took home 50.7, 58.4, and 50.3  percent of the vote. Before him, Rudolph Giuliani was given the keys to the Big Apple by earning 55 percent and 49 percent of the NYC vote in his two elections.

In Los Angeles, only two mayors have received at least 60 percent of the general election vote since 1961. Richard Riordan pulled in 61.49 percent in 1997 while Tom Bradley amassed 63.84 percent and 67.61 percent in the 1981 and 1985 LA race.

In Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel assumed office having won a solid 55 percent of the general vote, but before him, Richard M. Daley held the position. He won, and was reelected, five times, each one more convincingly than the other, gaining at least 70 percent of the vote three times, 60 percent twice, and entering office with just 55 percent. Similarly, his predecessor Harold Washington was the first African-American Mayor of Chicago, serving from 1983 until his death in 1987, and winning his sole election with 55 percent of the vote. Prior to him, it was Jane Byrne who won the general election with 72 percent of the vote. At the time, it was the largest margin ever recorded in a mayoral election.

So what does this all mean?

Boston has a substantially smaller population, and subsequent smaller voter turnout, than all of the aforementioned cities which makes it easier to see and record correlations between voters and candidates. Not only does Boston’s population pale in comparison to these other metropolises, but so too does its city limits. Based purely on utter speculation and raw bias, Bostonians appear more impassioned about their municipal elections, at least on paper. So is it really that much of a stretch to assume that they care more about what goes on within the city and who leads the charge, as it will have a more direct affect on them? Maybe. Maybe not.

But what we know for certain is that this race will be virtually tied until tomorrow’s ballots are counted. Even the poll on BostInno’s homepage has swayed from favoring Connolly, to Walsh, and back to Connolly by just a few percentage points.

Be sure to plan your election day schedule accordingly, taking into account where to vote, how to vote, and perhaps most importantly, why to vote.