If the mayoral election were held now, a former Bronx borough president, Fernando Ferrer, would win, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday.

In a head-to-head match up with Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Ferrer beat the incumbent by an 8-point margin. Last month, the Quinnipiac poll found Mr. Ferrer, who is considered the front-runner among the four Democratic contenders, in a dead heat with Mr. Bloomberg, who is favored to defeat two challengers for the Republican nomination. Mr. Ferrer led the mayor 47% to 39% among registered voters who participated in the new poll.

“For Ferrer, name recognition is certainly part of the numbers,” the director of the poll, Maurice Carroll, told The New York Sun. “Remember, he has a track record. He’s won a primary before. His numbers are probably where they are partly from Hispanic pride, and partly because of his track record. Irish Catholics were for Kennedy, blacks were for Dinkins so it isn’t a stretch to think there is an ethnic pride component here as well.”

While the early focus has been on how Mr. Ferrer would fare on November 8 against the incumbent, the new survey also continued to show him well ahead of his three opponents in the campaign leading up to the Democratic primary in six months.

The poll found 40% of Democrats in the sample said they supported Mr. Ferrer for the nomination. The number coincides with a key threshold, since a mayoral candidate must win at least 40% of the vote in a primary to avoid a run-off two weeks later. In the 2001 election, Mr. Ferrer won the Democratic primary but didn’t garner 40% of the vote. He lost the run-off to the then public advocate, Mark Green.

Trailing Mr. Ferrer among the Democrats are the Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, with 14% of the vote, and a congressman from Brooklyn, Anthony Weiner, and the City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, who both got 12%.

With eight months to go before the election, however, the polls are only an indication of the direction of the race, analysts said.

“These numbers are going to bounce around for a while,” a Baruch College professor of political science, Douglas Muzzio, said. “Ferrer is clearly the no. 1 candidate, and he’s got to be pleased to be at 40% at this point. He’s got to think that he’d rather be at 45% and have a cushion, but what is clear now is that it is Freddy and the rest of the pack.”

In a Republican primary match-up, Mr. Bloomberg is running well ahead of a former council minority leader, Thomas Ognibene, by 65% to 16%, the Quinnipiac poll found. A second challenger, Steven Shaw, an investment banker, is also seeking to run in the GOP primary.

A major problem for the mayor’s campaign prospects is the persistent perception that he doesn’t care about voters’ problems. Fully 52% of voters in the poll said they do not believe that Mr. Bloomberg understands what troubles them, compared with 41% who said they believe the mayor does care. Asked to respond to the same question, voters, by a ratio of 62% to 16%, said Mr. Ferrer cared about them.

Other than Mr. Ferrer, matchups between the mayor and each of the Democratic contenders were close. Mr. Bloomberg led 40% to 38% against Mr. Miller, 41% to 38% against Ms. Fields, and 41% to 36% against Mr. Weiner.

The latest poll figures were released just a day after Mr. Bloomberg declined, at a breakfast with businessmen, to pledge that he would not raise taxes again in his second term. He made a no new-taxes pledge in his inaugural address in 2002 and broke it a year later.

The Democratic mayoral hopefuls also declined to make that promise.

Mr. Miller’s campaign said the speaker would “continue to work for lower taxes, but he is not going to take an irresponsible political pledge like the mayor did to get elected.”

A Ferrer spokesman, Chad Clanton, said: “Ferrer will be straight with the people. If he thinks that is necessary, he will make a straightforward case as to why.”

Mr. Weiner’s campaign said the congressman would focus on “easing the tax burden” but stopped short of pledging no new taxes.

The Quinnipiac poll involved interviews between February 22 and March 1 with 1,435 people registered to vote in New York City.