CARACAS (Venezuela): Cilia Chirino is sure President Hugo Chavez will sweep 10 million of a possible 16 million votes in Venezuela's Dec. 3 elections -- and she has promised to deliver exactly 272 of them.

Chirino and a team of 12 Chavez campaign volunteers are in charge of mobilizing every voter in the poor barrio of Sorocaima, tucked so far into the hillsides around the capital that residents grow corn and raise goats.

Chirino has spent the last three months walking up and down Sorocaima's steep staircases dotted with ramshackle houses, knocking on neighbors' doors, calling out “the revolution has arrived” in reference to Chavez's socialist shake-up.

She and her team ensure voters are registered, know where to vote and, of course, that they back the leftist leader they call “El Comandante.”

“On election day we are going to be ready to start working at three in the morning,” said Chirino, 41. “We are going to make sure those 272 voters go out to support our president.”

A 10-minute jeep ride down the hill -- where the precarious brick-and-mortar homes give way to towering apartment buildings -- another campaign team coordinates the 48 battalion commanders of the vast electoral sub-district of El Valle.

While bountiful oil revenues and popular anti-US harangues have made Chavez the clear election favourite, he hopes a door-to-door get-out-the-vote crusade will deliver a resounding victory.

His rival, Manuel Rosales, has had fewer resources and less time to develop voter-participation efforts because he only became the official opposition candidate in August. Polls show Chavez, who has built up strong support among the majority poor, has a comfortable lead over a challenger who draws his main backing from middle and upper class voters.

Chavez's camp says it has recruited some 300,000 volunteers to get out the vote everywhere from the poor corners of Caracas to the dusty plains where the president grew up.

The campaign team has organized volunteers into a military-style structure of 11,000 “battalions” and 33,000 “platoons” -- reflecting the former army officer's often militaristic style.

Battalion chiefs like Chirino oversee a platoon of volunteers charged with garnering 10 Chavez votes each, organizing transportation to voting stations and selling raffle tickets to raise campaign cash.

“We're like soldiers, this is like a war without weapons,”said Cletalina Noemon, a battalion leader who works near Chirino. “Everyone who is with Chavez needs to vote.”

Despite Chavez leading in most polls by more than 15 points, political analysts say the size of his expected victory hinges on how many voters actually make it to the polls in a nation with historically high voter abstention.

A survey published this month by the local polling firm Hinterlaces projected about a third of voters would abstain.

“The key to this election for Chavism will be the mobilization of its voters,” said Oscar Schemel, the director of the polling firm. “If Chavez supporters manage to activate his electoral machinery ... he could expand his lead.”

The opposition says the get-out-the-vote machinery is part of systematic voter intimidation, symbolized by a minister who told workers at the state oil company to support Chavez or leave their jobs.

Many Venezuelans complain the government has used blacklists to pressure opposition-leaning public sector employees to support the president and ordered them to join pro-Chavez demonstrations.—Reuters