New Yorkers re-elected Senator Schumer in a landslide last night, cementing his status as the most popular elected official in the state.

In preliminary returns, Mr. Schumer, a Democrat from Brooklyn, was on track to win by more than 2.6 million votes, perhaps the largest margin of any Senate race in American history. With 91% of precincts reporting, Mr. Schumer had 72% of the vote, compared to 24% for the Republican candidate, Howard Mills, and 3% for the Conservative candidate, Marilyn O’Grady.

The previous record was established by Senator Moynihan in 1988 when he received 68% of the vote and defeated the Republican challenger, Robert McMillan, by about 2 million votes.

The lopsided victory this year reflects not only the broad appeal of Mr. Schumer, who supports the war in Iraq but opposes much of President Bush’s domestic agenda, but also the lackluster campaign mounted against him by the New York GOP.

Party officials anointed Mr. Mills, an assemblyman from Orange County, after Mayor Giuliani and other better-known candidates passed up the race. Governor Pataki and the Republican leadership did little to help him raise money or otherwise boost his campaign, evidently concluding that Mr. Schumer’s advantages were insurmountable.

As of last week, Mr. Mills had raised a total of $580,000, compared with $25 million gathered by Mr. Schumer.

Mr. Schumer, 53, has been an elected official since shortly after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1974. That fall, at the age of 23, he became the youngest person elected to the state Assembly since Teddy Roosevelt. After six years at Albany, he represented Brooklyn and Queens in the House of Representatives for 18 years. He moved up to the Senate in 1998, defeating Senator D’Amato, a three-term Republican, 54% to 44%.

Since then, Mr. Schumer has embraced Mr. D’Amato’s “Senator Pothole” approach to politics, visiting all 62 counties of the state in each year of his term and immersing himself in local issues. At the same time, he has seized opportunities to play on the national stage. In particular, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, he has led the fight to block some of President Bush’s nominees to the federal bench, arguing that they were “extremists” with a conservative agenda.

Mr. Mills tried to portray Mr. Schumer as a publicity hound who has been an ineffective senator, saying he had not authored a single major piece of legislation. Dr. O’Grady, and ophthalmologist from Garden City, argued that both of her opponents are liberals who support legalized abortion and gay rights.

Mr. Schumer avoided responding to these attacks and used his campaign ads to boast about his accomplishments. He took credit for securing $20 billion in federal aid for New York after September 11,2001,recruiting low-cost airlines to upstate cities, pushing through laws that made college tuition partially tax deductible, and sped the availability of low-cost generic drugs, among others.

In a recent poll by Marist College, Mr. Schumer registered the highest approval rating of any major politician in New York.

Of those polled, 61% rated him either good or excellent, compared to 57% for Senator Clinton and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, 41% for Governor Pataki, and 39% for President Bush.