Britons head to the polls for local votes LONDON--Britons are voting Thursday in a spate of local and mayoral elections--including in London, where voters will choose the mayor who will run the city as it hosts this summers's Olympic Games. In the capital, the main battle is between incumbent Boris Johnson, a Conservative, and Ken Livingstone, a maverick Labor politician who served as London's first elected mayor between 2000 and 2008. Before that, the city did not have a directly elected mayor. If the polls are right, Johnson, a charismatic politician who is popular in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- his many gaffes, is on course to defeat Livingstone, whose campaign has struggled to regain steam following accusations of tax avoidance. A Johnson win would be a welcome boost for Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative-led government, which has been dogged by plummeting polls and a string of political setbacks, including an ongoing scandal over links with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Cameron's party is bracing for dismal results in local elections across the United Kingdom, with almost 5,000 seats up for grabs in 181 local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales. Voters are expected to punish the coalition government for a string of grim headlines in recent weeks that range from a botched handling of a fuel strike to a failed attempt to deport a radical cleric to hiking taxes for pensioners and on the sale of hot snacks. The recent news that United Kingdom has slipped back into recession also has added to the overall woes of a government whose key pledge is to turn around the economy. Ten cities in Britain, including Birmingham and Manchester, will hold referendums on Thursday on whether to adopt directly-elected mayors, while voters in Liverpool and Salford will vote for their first elected mayor. The bulk of the results are expected on Friday.