When Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002, he converted an old hearing room in City Hall into a newsroom-style work space with his desk in the center, and he began commuting by subway.

The business executive-turned-mayor was a newcomer to politics, but, like every mayor before him, he brought his own style and his own policy agenda.

With only a week to go before the primary, Democratic voters are left to wonder what kind of administration each of the four mayoral candidates would run.

A Marist College poll released yesterday makes it seem more probable that the party’s front-runner, Fernando Ferrer, will not win the 40% he needs in the primary to avoid a runoff on September 27 with the second-place finisher.

The poll, conducted over five days last week, found that 33% of “likely Democratic voters” planned to back Mr. Ferrer, down from 38% in June. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who had long been polling in last place, moved into second with 20%, while 17% said they would vote for the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, and 14% said they planned to support the president of Manhattan, C. Virginia Fields. The remaining 16% said they were undecided. The margin of error, according to Marist, was plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Though the Democratic candidates have been reluctant to talk about the commissioners they’d appoint and the physical changes they might make to City Hall, they all have public records that offer a window into the kinds of leaders they’d be.

The former president of the Bronx, Mr. Ferrer, for example, rose through the ranks of his borough’s political establishment, and his chief campaign consultant, Roberto Ramirez, is a powerbroker and former Bronx Democratic Party leader. Analysts expect Mr. Ferrer to tap many of his trusted Bronx associates and former staff members for positions in his administration.

A political consultant, Norman Adler, said he doubted Mr. Ferrer would keep Mr. Bloomberg’s bullpen office.

“I can’t imagine Freddy Ferrer having a bullpen administration,” Mr. Adler said. “That’s not the way he operates. I see the cubicle walls tumbling down if Freddy is mayor.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Ferrer, Christy Setzer, said it was “incredibly premature to talk about who might be in the administration.” Similarly, a spokesman for Mr. Weiner, Anson Kaye, said it would be “presumptuous” to talk about appointees and office decor. A Miller spokesman, Stephen Sigmund, said it was “pleasant to think about, but premature to talk about.” And a spokeswoman for Ms. Fields, Kirsten Powers, said: “Those are decisions she would make in office.”

All the Democrats except Mr. Weiner have said they would appoint their own police commissioner rather than keep Raymond Kelly, who has received national praise for the city’s anti-terrorism efforts. Mr. Kelly has, however, rendered that question irrelevant, saying he wouldn’t work for any of them.

The four Democrats have all proposed “affordable housing” plans and presented themselves as champions of the middle class, which they say has been neglected on Mr. Bloomberg’s watch.

Political observers said they would expect Ms. Fields, the only black candidate, to have an ethically diverse group of top administrators with women in key positions, as she does in her current office and campaign.

Mr. Miller, they said, would probably bring in a mix of political appointees – to pay back the county organizations, such as the Queens Democratic Committee, that endorsed him – and outside experts. While Mr. Miller has a reputation for running an efficient council office, he has also been known to appease some lobbyists. Shortly after being elected speaker, he opposed a controversial bill on lead paint, pushed by Council Member Bill Perkins, but ended up supporting it under pressure from activists.

“He’s very responsive to pressures,” a former Parks Department commissioner, Henry Stern, said. Mr. Stern, a Bloomberg supporter, predicted, however, that Mr. Miller would not appoint his mother, Lynden Miller, as parks commissioner, though she is a prominent landscape designer and “very qualified.”

One consultant, Scott Levenson, said he did not know whom Mr. Weiner would bring in at the upper echelon of his staff, but he predicted that the administration would be “Weiner heavy.”

“He would be most likely to be a leader at the hub who makes on-line decisions,” Mr. Levenson said. “One could expect that a Weiner administration would be Weiner-heavy.”

For months, the Democrats have sought to contrast their managerial styles with Mr. Bloomberg’s, saying they would ditch the Republican incumbent’s nice-guy approach to getting money from Washington and Albany, because it has not produced results.

The jury, however, is out on how hard-hitting they would be and whether their styles would be more effective in getting funds and approval from the Republicans who control Washington and from the two-party Albany oligarchy.

Many of the proposals the Democrats have unveiled would require approvals from Albany. Mr. Weiner has proposed income-tax cuts for residents making less than $150,000 to be offset by a tax hike for the city’s wealthiest; Mr. Miller wants to extend the city’s surcharge on personal income taxes on those who make more than $500,000 and use the money to reduce the number of students in public school classes, and Mr. Ferrer wants to reinstate a tax on stock trades, to raise $4 billion for education.

Mr. Weiner has said that within the first 100 days of his mayoralty he would begin plans to develop Governor’s Island. Mr. Miller said that immediately after taking office he would appoint a city director of homeland security. Ms. Fields said her first order of business would be to appoint a deputy mayor to address unemployment among members of minority groups.

Whoever becomes the Democrat nominee, however, will first face the challenge of unseating Mr. Bloomberg, who is enjoying record high ratings in the polls and is widely viewed as the favorite against any of them.