With 100% of precincts reporting, Ray Nagin and Mitch Landrieu have advanced to the runoff, with Nagin running a lot stronger than polls indicated.

Nagin       38%

Landrieu    29

Forman      17

Couhig      10

Others       6

The race to guide New Orleans through one of the biggest urban reconstruction projects in U.S. history — rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina — was whittled to two familiar candidates: Mayor Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

Nagin earned a comfortable lead Saturday with 38 percent or 41,489 votes, but short of the majority needed to secure a second term as mayor without the May 20 runoff. Landrieu had 29 percent, or 31,499 votes. Nonprofit executive Ron Forman followed with 17 percent, 18,734 votes, and 19 other candidates trailed far behind.

The election was a tricky experiment of modern-day democracy that gave voters scattered by the hurricane a say in this city's future.

Despite the high stakes — the municipal leadership will make key decisions about where and what to rebuild in a city where whole neighborhoods remain uninhabitable — turnout was low, roughly a third of those eligible.

Of the city's 297,000 registered voters, tens of thousands are spread out across the United States. More than 20,000 cast ballots early by mail, fax or at satellite voting stations around the state, and thousands more made their way to 76 improvised polling stations. Some traveled by bus or in car caravans from such evacuee havens as Houston, Dallas and Atlanta.