Voting to lift the darkness from Jerusalem the golden

Of the other candidates, maverick Russian oligarch Arkady Gaydamak scores less than 10 per cent, while the quirky Dan Biron of the Green Leaf party, which campaigns for the legalisation of marijuana, is expected to received one per cent of the vote.

Rabbi Porush had been closing the gap, but he shot himself in the foot over the weekend when speaking in Yiddish to a forum of Belz Chasidim, he told them that "every Jewish city will have a Charedi mayor in 10 years' time due to our higher birth rate".

The faux pas, which frightened off non-Orthodox voters, has probably put the seal on Barkat's victory. The founder of the highly successful BMW high-tech group stood for mayor in 2003. Despite losing to the incumbent Lupolianski in 2003, he retired from business to devote himself to being leader of the opposition on the Jerusalem City Council.

Barkat has focused a major part of his campaign on the city's economic plight rather than its demographic divisions. "I understand business and will attract more businesses to the city and create more and better jobs," he insists. "That will improve the standard of living for all Jerusalemites, whether they are ultra-Orthodox, secular or Arab." He boasts that he can "best develop a tourist infrastructure that will bring 10 million visitors to Jerusalem each year rather than the current two million".

But the demographics are key to the outcome of this election. The city's secular residents see Barkat as a last chance to arrest the growing "Charedisation" of the city as the higher birth rate of strictly-Orthodox families impacts on the population. And yet Israel's leading demographer, Professor Sergio Della Pergola of the Hebrew University, estimates that despite the large size of the strictly-Orthodox community, a high proportion of them are children, so the group makes up only 26 per cent of the electorate.

"But what is critical is the ability of the candidates to bring out their supporters on polling day," he says.

It would be a mistake, however, to see the election as a face-off between secular Barkat and ultra-Orthodox Porush. If Barkat becomes mayor, it will be because he has won the support of the city's modern Orthodox constituent - an estimated 20 per cent of voters. This will be bad news for the city's Arabs as Barkat has wooed religious voters by promising the construction of new Jewish housing in Arab East Jerusalem.

The city's Arabs boycott the elections as part of their claim for a separate Jerusalem as capital of a Palestinian state, although some Arab leaders have indicated that Gaydamak is worthy of support. Both Barkat and Porush are adamant that the city will not be divided.

Sarah Kreimer, associate director of Ir Amim, a non-government organisation that seeks equal resources for the city's Arabs, says that 67 per cent of Jerusalem's Arabs live below the poverty line compared to 25 per cent of Jews.

"And the city is actually divided by a wall," she adds. "Of the city's 250,000 to 270,000 Arabs, 25 per cent live on the eastern side of the separation barrier, uniting them with the West Bank and dividing them from Jerusalem."

For the most part however, Jerusalem's Arabs are a non-issue. This election is about whether Jerusalem's future is as an strictly-Orthodox city. Dr Maya Choshen, of the Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies, insists that the pace at which the city is becoming Charedi is slower than is generally thought, pointing out that many strictly-Orthodox Jerusalemites are leaving, moving to new Charedi cities like Modiin Illit and Elad.

Nevertheless, secular Barkat may wrest control from the current administration - but the fact that he only has three children, while outgoing mayor Lupolianski and current candidate Rabbi Porush both have 12, suggests that the city's long-term future is inevitably with the black hats.