In the “ghettoized” Parisian neighborhood that inspired Jordan Bardella’s campaign

“This guy is just a pretty face, but he throws out numbers that don’t make sense. Eliminating the under-30 tax? That can’t be done. I was much more impressed by the left-wing candidate, he made sense.”

One long-time resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he looked after the head registered nurse during school holidays “when he was a child” but was virtually unknown, never attending youth or after-school clubs.

“Bardella’s business proposition is to say that Saint-Denis is a very harsh city, full of Islamists and drug traffickers. In that case, isn’t it strange that he left his mother here,” he said, pointing to the building above the youth center and his last name. Bertelli-Mota, Luisa, on the mailbox.

“She works as a waitress in the municipal canteen. No one bothers her about her son and yet he is now the number one nurse. We are open to everyone here, not like some.

“The few times I’ve seen him are when he shows up early in the morning to vote while everyone else is sleeping. If he really wanted to help, he would have come there to help us. But he didn’t run for mayor, he didn’t come to try to save his own city.

“He doesn’t care about the suburbs, they are for blacks and Arabs, and Greater Paris is for monarchs. It’s like that. He’s there to be number one. »

“I doubt it will be well received”

While the RN is leading the polls for the early legislative elections called by Emmanuel Macron, the president, this Sunday and next Sunday, its chances of having a Saint-Denis, long a bastion of the left, are zero.

Communist Party member Stephane Peu is expected to return home after his coalition won nearly 80 percent of the vote two years ago in a runoff against the Macron-backed candidate. He is backed by a broad left-wing alliance that includes his own party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left-wing France Unbowed movement, the Socialists and the Greens.

Many Saint-Denis residents are uncomfortable with Mr. Macron’s bill aimed at fighting “Islamist separatism”, stigmatizing minorities according to its detractors, and the decision to ban abayas, long dresses worn by some Muslim women, in schools.

But the RN goes further by calling for a massive reduction in immigration, a French-first public services policy and a ban on the Muslim headscarf in public places – a measure that would be almost impossible to apply in Saint-Denis given the number of hijabs.

While others were campaigning, no one had seen the RN candidate at the bustling Saint-Denis market, where many people said they could not vote because they did not have French nationality, and his poster was the only one missing from the campaign posters in front of the huge town hall.

Louise Kervella, 23, said: “I doubt he would receive a good reception,” while handing out leaflets to Anasse Kazib, a 37-year-old railway worker and spokesperson for the Trotskyist Permanent Revolution movement. She said the only suspense here was what her party would wrest from the left-wing coalition.