In news guaranteed only to please the pen of Andrew Gilligan more than his legion of loyal supporters, Ken Livingstone announced his plan to contest the 2012 Mayoral election in Ruislip last night. Speaking to an audience of Indian-origin Labour supporters in west London over his concern at the governance of race relations in the capital, the 63 year-old ex-mayor revealed his ambition: I actually support the government policy that we should work longer......

Boris Johnson is the new Mayor of London. The Blond received 1,043,761 (43%) first preference votes compared to Livingstone's 893,877 (37%), with Paddick gaining just 10% of the vote. With neither main candidate reaching the magic 50%, second preference votes were taken into account, giving Boris a victory of 1,168,738 votes over Ken's 1,028,966. The result mirrors local election results all over the UK, where the Conservatives have delivered a savage mauling to Labour......

That's the partisan message from Londonist today as Londoners go to the polling stations to choose their next mayor and members of the London Assembly. As we write we are reliably informed that a new YouGov poll for today's Evening Standard will show Boris Johnson heading for victory over Ken Livingstone by six percent of the vote after electors' second preferences are taken into account. But any news-stand message on our streets later today......

Londoners are all hot and bothered over the exact voting procedure they will be faced with in the mayoral election, according to the Evening Standard. The use of the second preference system appears to be causing some puzzlement, with 30% of those surveyed by the paper admitting they were unaware of its employment in tomorrow’s vote, and just 39% claiming they were fully clear about the process. It seems that amidst all the insults......

One of the few things we can be sure of about the mayoral race is that Boris and Ken in particular are knackered. But with just three full campaigning days remaining they must now run harder than ever. If the opinion polls are telling us anything, it is that neither can be certain which of them will win and that every single vote–first or second preference–is precious to them. Livingstone’s strategy between now and......

OK, this Londonvidium lark is supposed to be a weekend feature. But this is so hilarious we just couldn't wait. A very clever bit of video editing courtesy of London Shite.......

The mayoral race has entered its final lap with the two leading contenders straining madly for the winning tape. The polls still fall into two groups: YouGov's, which continue to show Boris Johnson in the lead, and all the others which show him and Ken Livingstone neck-and-neck. Perhaps the most significant development is that the last two YouGovs have found Johnson's lead diminishing, adding to the general – and largely unscientific – feeling that it's......

Has the final wheel come off Boris Johnson’s 'New Routemaster' policy? The good thing about it was that it came with a promise to restore conductors to the routes currently served by the bendy buses Johnson wants to replace: a bus with a conductor is a friendlier bus, a friendlier bus is a safer bus and so on. Problem is, Johnson has no grip on the economics of the plan, even weeks after he first......

Does anyone know who’s winning? On Monday, according to YouGov, it was Boris Johnson by a massive 13 points. But on Wednesday, according to Ipsos-MORI, it was Ken Livingstone by one, prompting The London Paper to dub him 'Comeback Ken'. So, is Ken coming back or is he a goner? Londonist is as baffled as everyone else but maybe the past week contained some clues about which way the tide is going. On Tuesday,......

Ah, Brian Paddick. He's almost as much of a media figure as Boris Johnson, which is pretty well why the Lib Dems opted for him as their challenger to the court of Ken (as we noted at the time). This Londonista even remembers sharing the same South London air with the erstwhile police commander during his softly softly stint in policing the mean streets of Lambeth (our notional file on him recalls his Paul......

With only a few weeks to go until the Mayoral Elections BBC London decided to turn its attention to the big 3 contenders' online presences. Who better to consult than your very own Londonist? It's time the race for City Hall addressed some key questions. Where is the best place to get goss on Boris? Is Brian looking for love? And why does Ken refer to himself in the third person anyway? See Londonist......

The Blond is immortalised in song, courtesy of MankiniMan.......

Having previously interviewed Sian Berry, the standard-bearer for the Greens now currently in a pact (electoral, not economic or suicide we assume) with Labour's Ken Livingstone, Londonist sent a set of common questions out to (most of) the other candidates in the May 1st mayoral election. First up is Gerard Batten, standing for the UK Independence Party, who doubles up as one of the capital's representatives in the European Parliament (the existential considerations of......

Muddled in the mind about who you're going to vote for in the upcoming Mayoral elections? The Vote Match website will help you out. You're asked to agree or disagree with 25 statements, and then indicate the issues that matter most to you. Vote Match compares your answers to those of the main candidates and presents you with a ranked list of who you might like to vote for. It has some inevitable holes -......

There was so much crazy action in the mayoral campaign last week that Londonist was left gasping to keep up. The most entertaining bit was when Boris Johnson launched his environment manifesto with a photo opportunity on Hampstead Heath. BBC London viewers and others were treated to the splendid sight of The Blond hacking his way through a patch of north London undergrowth – perhaps specially provided for the occasion, who knows? – wearing......

Londonist was at the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday for the formal launch of Ken Livingstone’s mayoral election campaign. Setting aside the usual cynicism about politicians and the worrying stuff in those Evening Standard exposes, it was a stirring occasion. Doreen Lawrence introduced the mayor, paying tribute to his achievements including his contribution to putting the capital at ease with its own cosmopolitanism. He thanked her for her role in improving the attitude of......

A Boris emulator from Chris Roberts, creator of the Evening Standard Headline Generator. Does exactly what it doesn't say, more or less, in a manner of speaking, on the can.......

It's still difficult to tell how the mayoral race is going - where are all the opinion polls? But there's no doubt that, in the past week, the Livingstone campaign has made a huge effort to get its show on the road. The launch of his transport manifesto at Stratford station on Monday was designed to invite the most damning of comparisons between the present mayor's apparent grasp of the scale and complexity of......

The clearest thing to emerge from the mayoral race this week is that no one can agree about buses. The arguments began last Wednesday when Boris Johnson told Vanessa Feltz that the '21st Century' Routemasters he wants to replace bendy buses with would all have conductors and that these would cost 'eight million quid'. Ken Livingstone went on the show next day to say Boris’s figures were fine except he’d left a nought off......

If we were Mayor, we'd order more bendybuses, not fewer as Boris would like. But why settle for just one concertina point? We'd fuse together all remaining double-deckers into a superomnibendysnake to convey tourists about town. All aboard! Please let us know what you'd do if you were Mayor via the medium of Photoshop. Send all entries to londonist - at - gmail - dot - com and we'll sort out some kind of......

All I do each night is pray...hoping that I'll be electable again some day. The highlight of the mayoral election week came at the Evening Standard’s Influentials Debate at the RSA on Monday, when Ken Livingstone told LBC breakfast host Nick Ferrari why he doesn’t drive. He revealed that he’d tried cars when a young man because he’d thought it would help him to get girls, but in the end had decided to “concentrate on......

Time Out gave us a plug yesterday, so it's only fair we return the favour (cos they're, like, a tiny, struggling outfit who need a bit of profile raising). Editor-at-Large Michael Hodges is standing for Mayor. Hate him or loathe him, the bespectacled columnist certainly lives London in a way the other candidates do not. His weekly adventures take him to every corner of town, where he orders a drink, dispenses an insult and......

It’s been another bruising week in the London mayoral election campaign. Eccentric Tory contender Boris Johnson may have had the best of it. On Tuesday Ken Livingstone announced that drivers of gas-guzzlers will be charged £25 to enter the Congestion Zone from October – assuming he’s re-elected. The Greens support the move, but the Lib Dems’ Brian Paddick – he’s the gay, “cannabis cop” from Brixton, you’ll recall – was critical, notably of the same......