With an abstention rate of 38 percent including blank ballots in contrast to 23.5 percent nationwide in the first round of the presidential election, Stains reflects a particularly high degree of disillusionment. A community of about 38,000 inhabitants on the outskirts of Paris, it voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Mélenchon, a former Trotskyite, who finished fourth. With Mr. Mélenchon out, many people see the race, as expressed in an old French saying, as a choice between “la peste et le choléra” (the plague and the cholera).

To many people here, the policy proposals of both candidates are unattractive: Ms. Le Pen proposes a law-and-order program that would place binational Muslims at higher risk of expulsion from the country if they are considered even remotely connected to those suspected of having terrorist links. She also has inveighed against wearing a head scarf in public.

Mr. Macron, a former banker, is seen as close to the moneyed elite. He is disparaged for his support for Uber, which employs many people at low wages and often under poor conditions. He worked as a minister to the Socialist president François Hollande, who promised improvements that never arrived.

Sociologists and political scientists who study France’s poorer suburbs with substantial minority populations, known here as banlieues, said neither candidate had given people much reason to vote for him or her.

“They are really tired of people talking about the banlieues but not doing anything,” said Julien Talpin, a researcher in political science at the University of Lille. “Macron in the banlieues is a kind of big failure. He appears to be an embodiment of the establishment, of the elite, and people can tell he’s not one of them.”

Mr. Macron received 22 percent of the vote in Stains.

Thomas Kirszbaum, a sociologist, says the demographics and voting patterns of the poorer suburbs are far more complex than is widely understood. Living together are people of immigrant background, who vote on the far left or not at all, and some longtime residents, usually white, but also some immigrants, who vote on the extreme right. In Stains, nearly 15 percent of voters favored Ms. Le Pen.