Mayor Bloomberg has recently increased his commanding lead over Fernando Ferrer, according to two new polls released yesterday.

In a city where there are five registered Democrats for every Republican, the Republican mayor has secured a 60% to 32% lead over Mr. Ferrer, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. In a Marist poll, 59% of likely voters said they would choose Mr. Bloomberg, versus 32% for Mr. Ferrer.

The new polls show a significant increase in the mayor’s support in the past couple of weeks. A late September Quinnipiac poll, for example, found that Mr. Bloomberg was leading by 52% to 38%.

The director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, Maurice Carroll, attributed the mayor’s soaring poll numbers to his handling of the recent terror threat to the subway system.

“Even in the first three nights of polling, when Mayor Bloomberg was being hammered for not participating in the Harlem debate, he was cruising along with a 19-point lead,” Mr. Carroll said. “After his dramatic announcement of a possible threat to the city’s subway system and coverage of Commander-in-Chief Bloomberg riding the subway, his numbers went through the roof.”

He said the numbers might come back down in the coming weeks, now that the threat has passed.

Well many of those public polls said Freddy Ferrer would never win the Democratic primary, so we’ll see whether they keep up their track record,” Mr. Ferrer’s pollster, Jef Pollock, said.

Polling experts said the poll results could have two possible impacts: They could make it much tougher for Mr. Ferrer to find donors, and they could make Mr. Bloomberg’s supporters less likely to turn out.

Mr. Ferrer has raised only about $230,000 since the Democratic primary last month.