With a smile on his face, flip-flops on his feet and a cannabis joint in his hand, Jean-François Charmand wandered up to the polling station at Buffle Primary School in Grigny, south of Paris.

"I’m not going to tell you who I’m going to vote for," said the 38-year-old painter decorator. "But I’ll tell you who I’m going to vote against - Nicolas Sarkozy."

Amongst the largely immigrant population on Grigny’s infamous Grande Borne estate - scene of riots in 2005 and again last year - Mr Charmand’s opinion was widely shared.

“If Sarkozy’s elected, it’s going to be chaos,’ he said, fingering his multi-coloured necklace. "We’re going to have even more police coming after les blacks and even less freedom than we do now."

As in much of the rest of France, Grigny’s inhabitants appeared determined to turn today's election into a referendum on the centre-right candidate.

Mostly, La Grande Borne’s voters were hostile to the former Interior Minister whom they blamed for unleashing police violence in a crackdown on crime and drugs.

"Frankly," said Mr Charmand. ’I even prefer Jean-Marie Le Pen’, leader of the ultra right National Front. "I don’t think he’s as nasty as Sarkozy."

He paused in front of the polling station, wondering briefly whether he could go in with the joint still in his hand.

"I suppose some people might be shocked," he said, taking a last drag and dropping the stub on the pavement.

In the centre of the bleak 1970s council estate - where only 44 per cent of adults are employed - Koné Jaoussou, 28, was waiting with a friend, Zair Issa, 18, after voting for the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal.

"I just hopes she gets in because if Sarkozy wins, this place is going to explode again," he said. "There’ll be riots here in the suburbs all over France."

To both men, Mr Sarkozy has come to enshrine a state apparatus synonymous with police harassment and exclusion from mainstream society.

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