If the final polls are close to correct, Saxony-Anhalt will produce a startling result on Sunday. The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, could win 42% of the vote. That’s nearly twice the 22% projected for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, yet the CDU’s Sven Schulze could remain minister-president.

That outcome would be perfectly legal. Germany’s proportional system does not promise the largest party power without a parliamentary majority, but the arrangement required to keep the AfD out would expose the contradiction at the center of German politics.