A high-profile battle for control of London dominated local elections in Britain today seen as a key test for embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown returns to Downing Street after voting
The capital's mayor Ken Livingstone, of the governing Labour Party, was facing a stiff challenge from maverick Conservative member of parliament Boris Johnson.
Labour has seen support plummet to its lowest since Margaret Thatcher's heyday in the late 1980s since prime minister Tony Blair stepped down in June, and the local polls are seen as a harbinger for a general election within two years.
Some 13,000 candidates are fighting for more than 4,000 seats on 159 municipal councils in England and Wales as well as the 25-member London Assembly. Polls were to close at 10pm tonight.
It is the capital, however, that is the big political prize: its mayor controls an annual budget of more than £11 billion and his decisions affect 7.5 million Londoners plus millions of visitors.
"I think it's going to be very close. We have got to get all the voters out. What we don't want is people voting for a change for the worst," said Livingstone as he went to vote.
A Conservative Party victory over Mr Livingstone would be a symbolic boost for the centre-right Tories at a time when they are riding high in the opinion polls, and hoping to gain a reputation as a government-in-waiting.
A third consecutive four-year term for Mr Livingstone, however, could reassure centre-left Labour that their recent dip in form is only temporary and they can recover before the country goes to the polls by May 2010.
Mr Brown - who voted with his wife Sarah at the Methodist Central Hall a few minutes' walk from Downing Street - has admitted his government faces a hard time as the global credit crunch hits the housing market and economic growth, alongside rising food and fuel prices.
Political analysts said Labour could do worse than their performance the last time the seats were contested in 2004, when they came third in the national vote equivalent with a 30 percent share of the vote.
Then, the fall-out from Britain's involvement in the widely unpopular Iraq war hit them hard, but this time, domestic issues, particularly the government's economic record, could be a factor.
There was widespread opposition to the use of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money to prop up Northern Rock bank, which collapsed in the global credit crunch and was later nationalised.
The abolition of a 10 per cent tax threshold has also caused outrage in the Labour ranks, with claims the party had abandoned its core principles of helping the most needy in society.
Recent national opinion polls have put Labour between 14 and 18 percentage points behind the Tories, with one putting the gap at its widest since 1987, when Thatcher was in power.
The London poll contest has proved the most high-profile, though, focusing sharply on the personalities of the two charismatic candidates.
Pro-Labour critics claim that former journalist Johnson, whose bumbling persona and colourful private life have been played down during the campaign, lacks the credibility to run a major world capital.
Mr Livingstone, known as "Red Ken" from his days as the far-left leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) in the 1970s, has struggled to regain ground in the campaign after accusations of cronyism which saw his poll rating slump.
An election-day poll by the London Evening Standard put Mr Johnson six points ahead, but the newspaper said the result was too close to call.
Mr Johnson was cautiously upbeat as he voted near his northwest London home, saying: "I'm always confident."
Barring recounts, results for 100 of the 159 councils are expected late tonight into early Friday. The remainder are due from midday tomorrow. London's next mayor will be one of the last results to be declared tomorrow evening.