From right-wing extremists to pet-stroking satirists, a record 42 political parties have registered to take part in this Sunday's German parliamentary election.

Most of these parties have no chance of joining Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is all but certain to win a fourth term, and other bigshots in the next Bundestag. But they provide a window into the wide spectrum of political opinion that exists in Germany beyond the mainstream.

Here’s a look at some of the smaller parties competing for votes on Sunday.

NPD

The extreme-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) is often referred to as a neo-Nazi organization and lawmakers have unsuccessfully sought to get the party banned — twice.

The first attempt to have the Constitutional Court declare the NPD unconstitutional collapsed in 2003 because judges rejected evidence obtained through undercover agents who had infiltrated the party.

A second attempt ended in failure this year due to Germany’s high bar for banning political parties, established to prevent a repeat of the Nazi regime’s practice of outlawing opponents. The Constitutional Court ruled in January that while the NPD's politics are “incompatible with democracy,” the party is too weak to pose a real threat.

The NPD received 1.3 percent of the vote in the 2013 German parliamentary election — not enough to make it into the Bundestag — and has one representative in the European Parliament, Udo Voigt.

Since the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was founded in 2013, the NPD has lost some of its supporters to the upstart party.

NPD posters for this year's election include one that states "asylum lobby = terror helpers," and another depicting migrants at sea on an inflatable raft with the words, "We take the air out of asylum politics."

During the election campaign, the NPD posted a message on Facebook that questioned whether one of the first black Bundestag members was truly German.

Bavaria Party

Founded after the end of World War II in 1946, the Bavaria Party (BP) wants a referendum on independence for the south German state. It is part of a political coalition called the European Free Alliance that also includes Catalan and Scottish independence parties.

BP argues that, as a state of 12 million people, Bavaria is just as viable an independent country as the likes of Belgium, Hungary or Sweden.

A poll in July lent some support to BP’s separatist stance, revealing that one in three Bavarians wanted to be independent of Germany — the highest proportion to support secession in any of the 16 states.

In one campaign poster, the party declares, "It's time for the great Bavarian revolt!" next to a statue of a Bavarian folk legend "The Smith of Kochel."

B*

B* describes itself as an “eco-anarchistic, real-Dadaist melting pot.” Its website boasts that the party has been going for 12 years under the motto of “small but slow, like a vampire snail that has sunk its teeth into the political party landscape.”

Among other things, the campaign calls for an unconditional basic income, leaving the NATO alliance, and “melting down a car for each felled tree.”

Die Einheit

Die Einheit — which means unity — calls itself the “only party in Germany” that represents the voice of ethnic Germans who immigrated from former Soviet states. The majority are Russian-Germans, like the party's founder, Dimitri Rempel.

Critics, including Russian sociologist and Vladimir Putin doubter Igor Eidman, have accused the party of helping to support the Kremlin’s agenda at a time when German leaders, including Merkel, have warned about potential meddling by Russia in the election. Rempel himself has denied being financed or influenced by Russia.

Die Einheit organized protests in the Russian-German community over a highly politicized case that led to diplomatic tensions between Berlin and Moscow last year. A 13-year-old Russian-German girl initially reported being kidnapped and raped by "Arab-looking" migrants in Berlin, but later admitted to inventing the story. Police found she had stayed with a friend on the day she was reported missing.

Die Partei

Literally “The Party,” the group started by editors of the humorous Titanic magazine in 2004 became the first satirical party to win a seat in the European Parliament in 2014.

Its campaigns take aim at traditional political parties: Its policies include blaming Putin “for everything,” and planning a “beer price control” similar to rent control. In one poster mocking Merkel's slogan, "For a Germany in which we live well and happily," a Die Partei candidate is pictured holding a rabbit with the words "For a Germany in which we pet cute animals well and happily."

Frische, unverbrauchte, sympathische Slogans für ein kuscheligeres Deutschland von @DiePARTEI - so geht Wahlkampf: pic.twitter.com/PRfmpDq2Ni — Mr. Nice (@420legalizenow) September 10, 2017

Die Partei also hijacked 31 AfD Facebook fan groups, renaming one page formerly called “Homeland Love” to “Hummus Love.”

German Communist Party

A relic of the Cold War, the German Communist Party (DKP) was formed in West Germany in 1968 after the Constitutional Court banned the previous communist party, the KPD, in 1956 for rejecting the “principles and institutions … of a free and democratic order.” The DKP was supported financially by communist East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), but has never made it into the Bundestag.

Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany

Not to be confused with the DKP, the Marxist-Leninist Party (MLPD) is another champion of communist dogma in modern Germany, but one that also “defends the merits” of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, as it says on its website.

The MLPD created a stir in the Israeli press this election cycle because a group called “Sympathizers of the PFLP” is listed as a supporter organization on its campaign website. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is a secular, Marxist-Leninist Palestinian organization, and is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the EU. It is not, however, banned in Germany.