Reuters
Recent campaign photos of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez (left), candidate for re-election, and his main rival Manuel Rosales. Venezuelans go to the polls today to elect their next president.

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters):

Many Venezuelans are looking anxiously to tarot cards and crystal balls to reveal the winner of tomorrow's presidential election, but seers are not about to risk plunging into the country's polarised politics.

Most opinion polls forecast the re-election of leftist President Hugo Chávez, but Venezuelans have been bombarding fortune-tellers such as tarot card-reader Yelitza and her colleagues, at a mystic hot line for a second opinion.

Despite the potential gain in business, the hot line's management told the team of mystics not to wade into the stormy waters of politics.

"Ninety per cent of the calls we get are from people who want to know how the elections are going to turn out. They call from both sides, but mostly from the opposition," Yelitza said, who, like other fortune-tellers, contacted by Reuters preferred not to give her full name.

Increasingly jittery

Venezuelans have grown increas-ingly jitter before the election, agitated by Chávez's accusations of coup and assassination plots in a country where political passions have often sparked violent clashes.

Supermarket shelves are bare because shoppers have stockpiled in case of post-vote chaos.

One 24-hour seer service said it was not worth the hassle of venturing into politics.

"I can see the reality, but these are sensitive days. And the future looks sensitive too," one female seer said.

Opposition candidate Manuel Rosales accuses the anti-United States Chávez of being a dictator in the making, seeking to turn the OPEC heavyweight into a Cuban-style one-party state.

Chávez derives his support from the poor majority, lavishing oil money on clinics and schools in shantytowns.

Poor Venezuelans are more likely to seek advice on the future from Maria Lionza, an indigenous goddess with a cult following that combines indigenous, African and Catholic traditions.

Some callers have taken to trying to trick the psychics.

One asked what the result would be in a theoretical soccer match between Barinas, Chávez's hometown, and Maracaibo, where Rosales lives.