A new construction is given for approximating a logarithmicpotential by a discrete one. This yields a new approach toapproximation with weighted polynomials of the formw"n"(" "= uppercase)P"n"(" "= uppercase). The new techniquesettles several open problems, and it leads to a simpleproof for the strong asymptotics on some L p(uppercase)extremal problems on the real line with exponential weights,which, for the case p=2, are equivalent to power- typeasymptotics for the leading coefficients of thecorresponding orthogonal polynomials. The method is alsomodified toyield (in a sense) uniformly good approximationon the whole support. This allows one to deduce strongasymptotics in some L p(uppercase) extremal problems withvarying weights. Applications are given, relating to fastdecreasing polynomials, asymptotic behavior of orthogonalpolynomials and multipoint Pade approximation. The approachis potential-theoretic, but the text is self-contained.