BY TYLER BRIDGES

As crucial state and local elections approach, President Hugo Chávez is ratcheting up attacks on opposition forces and wielding other polarizing tactics to distract Venezuelans from the nation's glaring problems, including soaring inflation and a record-high crime rate.

Chávez has expelled the U.S. ambassador, labeled the U.S. economic crisis as representative of capitalism's failures, and alleged once again that he's the target of an assassination plot while hurling insults at his political rivals.

As in past elections, analysts say that Chávez wants the Nov. 23 vote to be a referendum on himself, to capitalize on his personal popularity. With that strategy, they say, he hopes to distract voters from his unpopular policies and the day-to-day misery of their lives.

''Chávez wants people to forget about the potholes in the street, the electric blackouts, the water shortages, the trash in the streets and the rising insecurity,'' said Luis Vicente León, an independent Caracas pollster. ``Chávez wants the campaign focused on him, because his approval rating has risen from 46 percent in January to 58 percent. He's trying to polarize the electorate. He's tried this approach before, and it has worked.''

The elections are important for several reasons, analysts said. Chávez and his political allies are trying to retain their near-total control of Venezuela's levers of power.

RISK FOR PRESIDENT

After he suffered his first-ever electoral defeat in a referendum last December to rewrite the Constitution, a second loss would further embolden the opposition and complicate Chávez's plans for holding another referendum next year to get voters' approval to lift term limits. Chávez currently can't seek reelection when his term ends in 2012.

Building his political strength at home also allows him to continue to expand his anti-U.S. alliance throughout Latin America, using petrodollars.

In the Caricuao neighborhood of Caracas one recent Saturday, Chávez supporters used heavy-handed tactics.

A sound truck blaring campaign jingles for Antonio Ledezma, the opposition candidate for mayor, wound slowly up a hill toward a slum neighborhood, where Ledezma was planning to campaign.

As the truck reached a bend in the road, red-shirted Chávez supporters brandishing pistols jumped in front of the vehicle, forcing it to stop. They smashed the windshield, knifed the tires and fired five shots into the truck's back compartment.

''I was afraid for my life,'' driver Williams Gonzalez said, still shaking a few minutes later.

These Chávez supporters who zip about on motorcycles are known as the ''motorized force.'' One of them later blamed Ledezma and his allies for provoking the assault.

''They can carry out their campaign, but not here,'' said Néstor Chacón, who identified himself as a member of the motorized force, although he said he didn't see the attack. ``The barrios belong to Chávez.''

Ledezma had to cancel that campaign event.

ATTACK WITH ROCKS

A day later, Carlos Ocariz, an opposition candidate for mayor of Sucre, an impoverished Caracas subdivision, had to scoot into a trailing security vehicle when Chávez supporters hurled rocks at him and campaign workers.

''The government wants to polarize the country,'' Ocariz said later, sipping coffee in a bakery. ``They want to make it into a referendum on Chávez, because he's more popular than his candidates. We want to focus on concrete proposals by our candidates.''

Ocariz's approach seems to be working. A survey last week by Datanalisis, León's polling company, showed Ocariz leading Chávez's former minister of information by 16 percentage points.

The issues of crime and the economy are helping Ocariz and other opposition candidates, particularly in Caracas. Inflation there has reached 35 percent -- the highest in Latin America -- and crime has spun so far out of control that Foreign Policy magazine recently labeled Caracas the world's murder capital.

''You're worried when you go out at night,'' said Raquel Ledezma, a 59-year-old unemployed government office worker who was campaigning with Ocariz. ``A lot of young men have been killed.''

At stake in the election are 22 of Venezuela's 23 governorships -- Chávez allies won all but two of those races in 2004 -- and about 320 mayoral offices, most now held by Chávez supporters.

Among the more intriguing opposition candidates is Chávez's ex-wife, Marisabel Rodriguez. The former first lady is running for mayor of Barquisimeto, the capital of Lara state, west of Caracas. León said his polls found that she had a shot at winning.

A bellwether race is in Chávez's native state, Barinas. One of his brothers is campaigning to succeed their father as governor against a one-time Chávez supporter.

Aníbal Romero, a political scientist at Caracas' Metropolitan University, predicted that Chávez would lose up to eight of the governorships and more than 100 mayoral races.

''That would be a defeat for Chávez because he doesn't want to see any mayor's offices or governorships in opposition hands,'' Romero said.

Besides controlling the executive branch and most local and state offices, Chávez allies control the military, the Central Bank, the judiciary and all but seven seats in Congress.

A Chávez-appointed court infuriated the opposition in August by disqualifying several of its strongest candidates because of corruption charges that the opposition called politically motivated. Leopoldo López, the telegenic mayor of the Caracas subdivision of Chacao, was leading the race to be the mayor of metropolitan Caracas until the court barred him from running.

RISE TO POWER

Venezuelans first elected Chávez president 10 years ago. They were fed up with the failure of the country's two traditional political parties to use Venezuela's oil wealth to build an economy that benefited everyone.

As president, Chávez has used the state's record oil income with an eye to winning support at home and outside Venezuela. He has nationalized telephone, dairy and cement companies, tilting the country far to the left.