Polls put former rivals neck and neck in what is being described as a two-horse race
Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone last shared a platform late on the evening of 2 May 2008, when the newly elected Conservative mayor of London made his acceptance speech, in which he paid tribute to his Labour rival after stripping Livingstone of the title he had held for eight years.
Close to four years on, the fight between the rivals begins again in earnest on Tuesday, with polls putting them neck and neck.
The two contenders will defend their respective mayoral records ahead of the 3 May election in front of a 200-strong audience at an event organised by the charity Age UK London and the Greater London Forum for Older People.
Recent polling has given the Conservatives a jolt and the Labour camp hope. The healthy lead Johnson had enjoyed since June last year evaporated when a YouGov poll published in mid-January put Livingstone narrowly ahead by two percentage points (51%-49%). The findings indicated that the former mayor's flagship pledge to cut public transport fares by 7% appealed to Londoners, who were hit by a New Year fare rise averaging 5.6%.
A ComRes poll a week later gave Livingstone the same narrow margin over Johnson. But the Conservative incumbent wrested back a narrow lead (51%-49%) in a subsequent YouGov poll conducted for the London Evening Standard earlier this month. In a contest where personality plays a significant role, Livingstone was back behind Johnson and also lags behind his party, which is 12 points ahead of the Conservatives in London.
Johnson was seen as more charismatic (48% to 18%) and honest (23% to 18%). On policies, there was significant support for Livingstone's fare pledge (68% for compared with 16% against), but only 44% thought he would actually deliver it if re-elected. Of the top four issues of concern to voters, Livingstone was the most trusted to improve transport and the cost of living and to create jobs, while Johnson led on tackling crime.
The election takes place against the backdrop of a tough economic climate and austerity cuts imposed by the coalition government – a far cry from Livingstone's eight years in power under Labour, when his mayoralty benefited from an increase in public expenditure.
A source close to Johnson admits that being the Tory candidate mid-term under a Conservative-led government is "obviously tough", but points to the fact that many of those attracted to the offer of a big fare cut don't believe the Labour candidate can deliver.
Things appear even tougher for another candidate – Brian Paddick, the former senior Metropolitan police officer once again representing the Liberal Democrats after coming third in 2008 in an election fought under the supplementary vote system. This time he too represents a party in power but is trailing woefully behind in the polls (6%), and for his team, hustings alongside Johnson and Livingstone could not come soon enough.
Livingstone is seeking to woo the Lib Dem vote, telling the Guardian recently that he wanted to "bring the Liberals" into his administration if elected, while urging his supporters to vote for the Green candidate, Jenny Jones, as their second-preference vote. Lawrence Webb of Ukip is also standing.
For Livingstone, Tuesday has been a long time coming. He has been itching for a public debate with his Tory rival, confident that he will trump the most popular Conservative in the land when it comes to debating serious policy issues in detail. To that end, he has sought to cast Johnson's refusal to share a platform with him to date as a sign that he is too "chicken" to do so.
In fact, more than 30 invitations to debates have been sent out by different interest groups in London. Johnson and Livingstone are jointly billed at five events.
In a contest widely seen as a two-horse race, the pressure is on for the lead candidates – both famed for being gaffe-prone – to avoid own goals. So it was to the private despair of some in the Labour camp that Livingstone recently came under fire for saying in a New Statesman interview that the Tory party had once been riddled with suppressed homosexuality. The following week, he told an audience: "Hang a banker a week until the others improve".
Johnson also caused offence in the same edition of the New Statesman when he described a St Patrick's Day dinner organised under Livingstone's mayoral watch as "lefty crap" and claimed it was "£20,000 on a dinner at the Dorchester for Sinn Féin", when in fact it was a self-financed event attended by a range of public figures and representatives from across the Irish community.
Tony Travers, director of the Greater London group at the London School of Economics, says that in such a close-run race, any significant slip by either candidate could determine the outcome.
"Whereas normally the odd gaffe, the odd mistake or wrong statistic cited wouldn't be a problem in a race that is largely predetermined; in one where it could come down to 200 or 1,000 votes, then any one mistake could be fatal. In this kind of two-horse race, which is very very tight, then the slightest slip-up could make all the difference."
That aside, Travers says it is hard to know whose attributes will play best in the public debating arena in the current economic climate.
"People may want someone who manages the money effectively and makes what we've got work well, or you could say we want someone who distracts us from the economic gloom that surrounds us. That's the offer."
• Hélène Mulholland will be liveblogging the first of the London mayoral election debates at Friends House in Euston from 7pm on Tuesday 21 February