London mayor and local elections 2012 11.29am: Ken Livingstone has responded to today's YouGov poll, which gives Boris Johnson a health six-point lead in the London mayoral race. Livingstone said: Today, Londoners can vote Labour to cut their fares and save themselves on average £1,000, and in doing so ensure that the Conservative party is not rewarded. Every Labour voter must turn out today or the Tories will get away with it - they will carry on with policies that have led to recession, fare rises and police cuts. The £1,000 figure is a reference to his plans to cut the capital's transport fares by 7%, which he says will save the average Londoner £1,000. He has also written a blogpost on the LabourList website. He writes: Of course, we are the underdogs. The Tories were always going to benefit financially, in terms of media backing, and in terms of support from the most powerful. Though it doesn't carry the imprint of the Tory party, London's only daily paper [the Evening Standard] has now become a true blue freesheet. The piece returns by returning to the theme of financial self-interest: By spending just a few minutes at the polling station the average fare-payer can make themselves £1,000 better off. There are not many ways you can make £1,000 in less than half an hour. But that is what the average London fare-payer can do from 7am to 10pm today ... Polling day poses the clearest possible choice - four years of Tory fare rises, or a Labour fares cut that will save the average fare-payer £1,000. 11.24am: There is lots of good coverage of the elections in today's Guardian. Hélène Mulholland looks back at the London mayoral race, quoting this analysis of Ken Livingstone's campaign from Tony Travers, director of the Greater London group at the London School of Economics: It looks as if the Labour party has asserted some authority over what has been a below-par Livingstone campaign. Michael White looks at the English cities where voters are taking part in referendums today on whether or not to have elected mayors. He finds that in city after city "the yes campaign seems to have failed to generate enough momentum to overthrow scepticism, apathy and the status quo." Meanwhile, voters in Doncaster are being asked today to abandon their mayoral experiment: there is a deadlock between councillors and their elected English Democrat mayor. Dutch journalist Joris Luyendijk has been travelling around the UK asking people what they think about politics. With one or two exceptions people seemed to look at politics as a talent show with really boring contestants. You could follow it, or you could ignore it - a lifestyle choice. Either way, it would make no difference to your life. "Without wanting to sound ageist," a girl in Newcastle told me, "I suggest you go find some older people if you want to talk about the elections. That generation still cares about these things. Helen Pidd returns to Bradford, the scene of George Galloway's recent byelection triumph, and finds a political race dominated by the firebrand leftwinger - even though he isn't standing. He might run for mayor if Bradford votes yes in its referendum, though, Pidd reports. Andrew Sparrow has been in Liverpool meeting Joe Anderson, the Labour candidate for elected mayor. Voters ... who were backing Anderson often cited his achievement in bringing a cruise liner facility to the Mersey as their reason for supporting him. But the terminal is just one item in an Anderson manifesto that is remarkably upbeat, given that he runs a council badly hit by the coalition's cuts, and also pro-business to a degree that would make Peter Mandelson proud. It starts with the declaration: "This is an exciting time for Liverpool" and promises 20,000 new jobs, partly generated by a mayoral development corporation. Anderson refuses to be pigeon-holed as New Labour or Old Labour, but he's passionate about investment, and quite happy to say he would like the private sector to account for a larger slice of the Liverpool economy. And Martin Kettle writes that England needs to decide whether it cares about the rest of the UK. The London press must get out more. It needs to make a much more conscious and deliberate effort to report Scotland and Wales to England, as well to discharge a British responsibility to report to and for Scotland and Wales themselves.England needs to decide whether it cares. Watch the way the local election results are debated over the coming days. For the metropolitan political class, left and right, it will all be about two things: the London mayor and the overall impact on Westminster politics. But local elections are actually about local government everywhere. A better way to assess the 2012 local elections might be to measure what they say about the slow disintegration of British politics and political institutions. 10.51am: The Scottish council elections have far greater significance than usual this year, Severin Carrell, the Guardian's Scotland correspondent, writes: with the Scottish National party pushing on towards the independence referendum due in 2014, its performance today will be a key test of public opinion and its wider vitality. This is the first major test of popularity for Alex Salmond, the first minister, and the SNP since their landslide election victory in last May's Holyrood elections. He is expected to launch his independence referendum campaign in a matter of weeks. Also, he is expected to win today too, on numbers of votes and councillors at least. Winning control of Glasgow is the biggest single prize - and most expect a very tight race with Labour there, but Salmond insists the main goal is to be Scotland's largest party by number of councillors and share of the vote. Given Scotland's use of the single transferable voting system in large multi-member wards for council elections, the SNP slogan has rhythm and simplicity: Vote SNP, 1, 2, 3. The SNP is defending 368 seats against Labour's 337, but was marginally behind Labour on first preference votes in 2007. This time - even the Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont predicts this - the SNP are expected to increase that number comfortably. If the opinion polls are reflected today, it will win most first preference votes too. It is standing 612 candidates - well up on 2007, against 497 for Labour, 362 Tories and 247 Lib Dems. The Scottish Greens have 86 candidates while 691 independents and others, such as UKIP and Tommy Sheridan's party Solidarity, are standing too. The trick then is for the SNP to convert that lead into council control: it is in coalition or minority control of 13 of Scotland's 32 councils, while Labour is control or coalition at 11. All Scottish votes are being counted on Friday, with the final results due during the afternoon and into the early evening for larger councils such as Glasgow. So the first thing to watch for on Friday is: could the SNP win enough to run Scottish cities on its own? In Dundee, Edinburgh, Perth, Aberdeen or Stirling for instance? In Glasgow, most observers believe the SNP could just form a ruling coalition, unless Labour's intense efforts there pull off the victory Lamont and Ed Miliband crave. In these cities, turnout is key. 10.33am: YouGov have published two new polls. Their national voting intention figures are: Lab: 43% Con: 33% Lib Dem: 8% Ukip: 8% SNP/Plaid Cymru: 3% Green: 3% BNP: 1% Others: 1% That's a 10-point Labour lead, with a very strong showing for Ukip. YouGov's final London elections poll for the London Evening Standard shows Boris Johnson on 53% and Ken Livingstone on 47% with the other candidates removed. In the first-choice vote, Johnson is on 43%, Livingstone on 38%, Brian Paddick (Lib Dem) on 7%, Lawrence Webb (Ukip) on 4%, Siobhan Benita (independent) on 4%, Jenny Jones (Green) on 3%, and Carlos Cortiglia (BNP) on 1%. In the 2008 London mayoral election, Johnson won 42.48% of first-preference votes to Livingstone's 36.38%. In the second round, Johnson won 53.17% and Livingstone 46.73%. The results of today's poll are strikingly similar. The YouGov poll found that where Londoners were asked to vote for a party, rather than a person, their views were very different: Lab: 47 Con: 34 Lib Dem: 7 Others: 12 That means Johnson's personal popularity and Livingstone's unpopularity have the effect of outweighing a 13-point Labour lead. YouGov's prediction for the 25-seat London assembly is: Lab: 11 (up 3 from 2008) Con: 8 (down 3) Lib Dem: 2 (down 1) Ukip: 2 (up 2) Green: 2 (no change) BNP: 0 (down 1) 10.18am: I just checked with the Electoral Commission when all the results are expected. In London, the count for the mayor and the assembly will not start until tomorrow morning. It will take place at three centres across London: Olympia, Alexandra Palace and the Excel centre in the Docklands. We will gradually get a sense of who is winning over the course of the day. As soon as results from four constituencies are in, those results - including mayoral results for those areas - will be announced. When the next four are in, these will be announced, and the same with the next four, and then the final two. It could be quite an exciting process. The final result is expected at some point between 7pm and midnight on Friday night. The London Elects website is going to produce live bar charts showing who is winning throughout the day. Some councils across the country are beginning their counts straight after the polls close, in the traditional way, and those results will be in at some point in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Other councils are going to wait until tomorrow morning to begin counting, meaning those results will be in at some point tomorrow afternoon. Ballot papers for this year's London mayoral and London assembly elections 9.47am: The London voting system is different from that used at general elections, and seems to be causing a fair bit of confusion on Twitter. Here is an article explaining it in full, but the key points in voting for the mayor are below. For this contest, you can cast two votes: one vote in the first column for your first choice, the second vote in the second column for your second choice. Vote with a cross not a number. If a candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, he or she is elected. If not, the two candidates with the most first-choice votes - almost certainly Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone - go to a run-off, with all the other candidates eliminated. All the ballot papers where eliminated candidates are down as first choice are looked at again, and any second-preference votes for the top two candidates are added to the totals for those candidates. The candidate with the most first- and second-choice votes combined wins. If you are voting for Livingstone or Johnson as your first preference, your second preference will almost certainly not count. Second preferences are only redistributed when a ballot paper has as its first preference someone who was eliminated in the first round - and neither Livingstone nor Johnson are likely to be eliminated in the first round. If you are in favour of Lib Dem Brian Paddick, Green Jenny Jones, independent Siobhan Benita, Ukip's Lawrence Webb, or the BNP's Carlos Cortiglia, put them as your first preference rather than your second. This is the only way they stand a chance of making it into the second round. If you give them a second-preference vote, this will only count if they get enough first-preference votes from other people to get into the second round. Because the second round is likely to be between Ken and Boris, if you have voted for any other candidate as your first choice, it might be a good idea to choose between Labour and the Conservatives for your second - as then you will still get some say in who will run London even if your real favourite is eliminated. Some people have asked me (and I'm afraid this question may betray some anti-Boris bias) whether giving their first preference vote to Brian Paddick, Jenny Jones, or one of the other minor candidates, rather than to Livingstone, makes it more likely that Johnson will get above 50% of the vote in the first round, and thus win outright. The answer is no. Whoever you vote for, it does not make any difference to Johnson's vote or his share of the vote (as long as you vote for someone). To give a clear example, let's say 8 people vote for Johnson, and there are 10 other voters. If 5 of those others vote for Livingstone and 5 for Jones, there are still 8 votes for Johnson and 10 for other candidates, meaning Johnson does not get 50% of the vote. If 7 of the non-Johnson votes go to Jones and 3 to Livingstone, there are still 8 votes for Johnson and 10 for other candidates, meaning Johnson does not get 50% of the vote. Please post any other questions below the line and I'll try to answer them too. They can even be about how to keep Ken Livingstone out. 9.26am: Hello and welcome to today's election day live coverage. Andrew Sparrow and I will be live-blogging around the clock from today, when voters start going to the polls in local elections in England, Scotland and Wales, until late on Friday night, when we expect to find out whether Boris Johnson or Ken Livingstone will be the next mayor of London. As well as the battle for London mayor and elections to the London assembly, which acts as a check on the mayor, there are also elections to 130 councils in England (of a total of 353), all 32 councils in Scotland, and 21 of 22 Welsh councils (elections to Anglesey Council postponed to next May). Meanwhile two other cities are voting for an elected mayor: Salford and Liverpool. And 10 cities will hold referendums to decide whether they should have an elected mayor: Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield. My colleagues on the Datablog have put together this map that shows which councils are voting and who controls them now. And here are details of every candidate standing in the London assembly and London mayoral elections. A polling station at the Laycock Centre in Islington, London, this morning. Photograph: Paul Owen for the Guardian I cast my vote this morning at a polling station in the surprisingly pretty Laycock Centre, a conference venue, in Islington, London.