Pollster Predicts Upset Victory for Albania Opposition : Elections: V signs and a mass rally in Tirana show a groundswell of support for the Democratic Party.

With one jeep, a temperamental telephone and less than a week to explore the virgin territory of Albanian public opinion, a Gallup pollster has had to cut a few professional corners en route to his prediction of an opposition upset in Sunday’s election here.

But based on the number of V signs flashed by children along the rutted, mountainous roads, Robert Manchin is fairly confident the underdogs of the three-month-old Democratic Party are going to win the first multi-party vote ever held in Albania.

“You cannot really do a proper survey here,” understates the Hungarian chief of Gallup’s fledgling Eastern Europe network. “My methodology might seem suspect. But to tell the truth, as a professional sociologist, I think the V signs are just as reliable as asking silly questions in this kind of society.”

The two-fingered symbol for victory is the trademark of Albania’s first and most powerful opposition group, which has steamrollered through campaigning roadblocks to mount a serious threat to the once-immovable force of Albanian communism.

On Sunday, the voters will decide the composition of the 250-seat, single-chamber People’s Assembly, which up to now has been a rubber-stamp body for the Albanian Party of Labor, the official title of the Communist party that has ruled here uncontested for four and a half decades.

Democratic Party leader Sali Berisha’s prediction that his candidates will capture 70% of the vote may be overly optimistic. But a Friday night rally of 100,000 amid the dilapidated dormitories of Tirana’s Student Town seemed to bolster his claims of an impending landslide. The capital’s population is less than 300,000, and few outside Tirana have access to transport.

In contrast with Berisha’s exuberant confidence, Communist President Ramiz Alia has been making the conciliatory gestures of a man who fears he is facing defeat.

“I am certain the elections on the 31st of March will be free, democratic and will be crowned with complete success,” the 65-year-old president said at a news conference at which he called for a ruling coalition. “As to who will win, that is up to the people. It’s better to leave this to the people’s verdict than to make predictions.”

Outside forecasts of an opposition triumph are worrying the Communists, who only a few weeks ago were seen as assured of victory by their absolute control of every tool essential to reaching the masses.

The Communists have ruled unchallenged for 46 years, during which they spent lavishly to glorify the image and legacy of their late Stalinist leader, Enver Hoxha, at the expense of a population that is now literally starving. They command the army, the police and the ubiquitous Sigurimi secret service. They keep the media subjugated with perks in exchange for propaganda, while the paper and printing facilities made available to the sole opposition daily newspaper are stingy and irregular.

Perhaps most important, the ruling party has a lock on all means of moving about this desolate, mountainous country. Albania does not manufacture automobiles and has imported vehicles only for the military, the police and the Communist hierarchy. Tirana and other larger cities have rickety fleets of ancient buses, but the hoi polloi are largely left to go by foot, bicycle or donkey.

Less than 5% of Albanian homes are equipped with telephones.

It is this lack of infrastructure that has limited the Democratic Party’s 250 candidates to five cars and deprived Manchin of his “proper survey.”

The pollster has nonetheless run off 1,000 questionnaires he is distributing to city dwellers to compile a rough political portrait of Albania as part of a statistical tracking of Eastern Europe in transition.

On the basis of responses gathered so far and the crude counting of V signs in the countryside, Manchin predicts an outright majority for the Democratic Party.

“Contrary to all public knowledge and official contention, the population in the villages is even younger than that in the cities, and Albania’s young people are strongly for the opposition,” Manchin said.

Half of Albania’s 1.9 million voters are under the age of 28, Manchin said, adding that many in their 30s and 40s have told him they will vote for a change on behalf of their children.

Bulgarian voters last year bucked the Eastern Europe trend of defeating the Communists, primarily out of fear that radical reforms would be too disruptive. But in devastated Albania, where milk is rationed and bread is scarce, there is little sentiment for endorsing the status quo.

“Even in the south, where the Communists are supposed to be strongest, I heard the same arguments from older people,” Manchin said. “They said they would vote for their children, that they had been misled by the Communists, that mistakes were made and they had their chance. They are asking themselves, ‘Who could be worse?’ ”

With the broadening sense that there is nothing to lose by making a change, Albania’s desperately poor people do appear to be jumping on democracy’s bandwagon.

When the rare Western car wends its way through the towering mountains and crumbling villages, children run to the roadside to show the visitors a V sign. Their parents, nudging along burros or sheep, smile and confirm the sentiment with a V of their own. Even soldiers and border guards, with a furtive glance to ensure no one is looking, let foreigners know which party they’d like to vote for.

“Three out of five soldiers give us the V sign,” noted California Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove).

Dornan was part of a congressional delegation that spent the past week in Albania to conduct pre-election inspections for a report to the U.S. Congress. While the delegation leader, Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), made a point of not taking sides, the three Republican members insisted that American aid would flow to impoverished Albania only if the Communists are ousted.