But despite hysterical headlines claiming that the AfD’s presence augurs a “return of the Nazis,” support has remained tepid at best. In recent elections in Lower Saxony, the party garnered only 7.8 percent, below its stated 10 percent goal and far less than the CDU’s 34 percent. In an election last weekend in the Saarland, the CDU won over 40 percent of votes. The AfD won only 6.2 percent, barely clearing the threshold to take seats in the regional parliament.

Recent polls show that Merkel enjoys a high approval rating and that German voters remain committed to mainstream parties. The entry of former European Parliament President Martin Schulz as the chancellor candidate for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) has ignited the center-left and buoyed the prospects for Germany’s political mainstream. Even if the AfD were to rise substantially in the polls, Germany’s coalition-based parliamentary system makes it extremely unlikely that the party would be able to form a government.

And there are stark attitudinal differences between Germany and other Western countries, as reactions to recent terrorist attacks highlight. Whereas French President Francois Hollande stated that “We are at war” and declared a state of emergency in the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks, Merkel’s reaction to the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack was quiet, calm, and comforting. While Trump used the occasion of the Orlando Pulse massacre to congratulate himself on his own doomsday prognostications, the German people have “refused to panic.”

Why has Germany, a country once defined by radical right-wing conservatism and still seen by some foreigners as a comfortable home for Nazism, stayed relatively immune to the virus of global right-wing populism?

One explanation has to do with Germany’s economy. The so-called “engine of Europe” weathered the 2008 financial crisis far better than most other western nations and has generally benefited from the open borders and common currency of the Eurozone. Germany’s economy is export-based and the euro has allowed it to sell industrial goods to other European countries on advantageous terms.

But some of that strength is illusory: As the Economist pointed out in 2013, “most Germans’ living standards have stagnated, wealth is highly skewed and national saving … has been spectacularly badly invested.” Moreover, Germany’s economic fundamentals are not spectacularly stronger than other countries’. Germany currently enjoys a 4.6 percent unemployment rate, about the same as America’s current 4.7 percent and not substantially lower than the Danish 6.2 percent or Dutch 6.9 percent. As in many other Western countries, Germany’s economy is projected to grow 1-2 percent in the next year. Besides, commentators have noted that economic performance is no predictor of the appeal of economic populism. And even if Germany’s relatively healthy economy may ease the pressures on Merkel’s ruling coalition, it does not explain away the AfD’s poor electoral prospects.