Iran: "He's one of us," says taxi driver Hassan simply, explaining why he will vote for hardline conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the polls today in Iran's first ever election run-off.
"Forget north Tehran, this is real life," says Hassan with a sweeping gesture that ends pointing south.
The presidential race between Mr Ahmadinejad and wily cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has highlighted the stark class divides that are visible in their simplest and purest forms in this country's capital.
Hassan works for a cab company nestled in the breezy foothills of wealthy north Tehran, ferrying rich children to parties, ladies who lunch to swanky restaurants and besuited businessmen to high-powered meetings.
He starts work at 5am and rarely gets home before midnight. He works six days a week and earns less than $300 dollars a month - not enough to pay the bills and see his children through school. Home for Hassan is in south Tehran, the hub of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Polluted and overcrowded, here unemployment is high, drug abuse is rife and old crumbling houses give way to slums.
While Mr Rafsanjani has been spinning a reformist agenda that appeals to Iran's educated and wealthy with promises of more social freedoms and privatisation, Mr Ahmadinejad has gone back to basics with calls to solve poverty and social injustice. His promises of subsidies and a redistribution of Iran's vast oil wealth has been luring the voters in droves and has transformed him into an Islamic Robin Hood figure. For people like Hassan, Mr Ahmadinejad is the man who can rescue him from poverty.
Mr Ahmadinejad's seeming rise from obscurity should not be that much of a surprise. Born to a poor, working-class family, this son of a blacksmith grew up with strict Islamic values and a sense of his place in the world - in contrast to Mr Rafsanjani, the son of an affluent pistachio farmer who reputedly made millions wheeling and dealing after the revolution.
Mr Ahmadinejad's critics fear a militarisation of the system - as a former revolutionary guardsman it is predicted he will give top ministerial posts to other guards. Some say he is a fundamentalist fascist who will drag Iran back to the dark days, the period after the revolution when floggings and imprisonment were common for petty crimes, such as wearing make-up and being with members of the opposite sex.
His reputation as anti-western is not unfounded. As Tehran mayor he is famous for banning advertising hoardings of David Beckham, a move against "westoxification", and he shut down several cultural centres, turning them into prayer houses.
But Mr Ahmadinejad has dismissed rumours that he would introduce strict gender segregation in public and force women to wear the all-encompassing chador. "The country's true problems are unemployment and housing, not what to wear," he told state television.
And for the majority of Iranians, his words ring true.
"He's the only one who has been trying to tackle our real problems," says Hassan.
Opinion polls - notoriously unreliable - show the two candidates neck and neck. What is sure is that former front runner Mr Rafsanjani has a fight on his hands.
As the deadline for campaigning drew near, armies of Basij volunteers - Islamic militia - were handing out Ahmadinejad leaflets: a black-and-white photo of Mr Ahmadinejad eating a modest meal of bread and cheese, cross-legged on a Persian carpet, and his manifesto - a pledge to solve unemployment, housing and corruption.
His slogan, "How can you not vote for him after getting to know him?" seems to be doing the trick.