Prior political affiliations also set AfD voters apart. When Bernd Lucke founded the AfD, he intended to win voters both from the Christian Democrats and Germany’s liberal party, the Free Democratic Party (FDP). But although many AfD supporters have indeed come from the Christian Democrats, said Arzheimer, “the AfD [also] managed to mobilize many former non-voters—very unusual normally. They managed to bring back people into the political arena that had been disenchanted but quiet for years, even decades.” A scattering has also defected from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the socialist party die Linke, as well as the ultra-right-wing NPD—“a really nasty party,” noted Arzheimer. (The NPD, supported by an estimated three percent of German voters, gained its reputation for neo-Nazi sympathies after leaders boycotted a minute of silence for Holocaust victims in 2005, instead wanting to honor the victims of the Allied bombings of Dresden. NPD leaders also made headlines in 2008, blaming Barack Obama’s presidential win on an “alliance of Jews and Negroes,” and have been widely perceived as operating “on the edge of legality” regarding incitement to violence.) Crucially, Arzheimer pointed out, the AfD manages to attract NPD voters while also remaining “acceptable for a much larger group of the German population.”

What all these voters seem to share, say the experts studying them, is intense concern about immigration and Islam—issues with extraordinary capabilities for generating strange bedfellows. “Suddenly the far-right is pro-Jewish because it’s anti-Muslim,” said Lenka Bustikova, a political scientist at Arizona State University who has studied far-right movements further east in Europe. “Suddenly with the [influx] of refugees you have this new twist: You are for Western gender rights because you think the Muslims are cavemen. It’s going to be interesting to watch.”

Part of AfD’s strength so far has been its ability to capitalize on intense concerns about the economy and immigration with increasingly inflammatory rhetoric while maintaining a sheen of respectability—crucial in German politics, where incitement to ethnic or racial hatred is a criminal offense. But that sheen may wear off. “This is something we’ve seen a lot before in Germany,” said Art. “There’s a party that tries to emerge to the right of the CDU/CSU for one reason or another.” At the outset, “It looks like it may have a few primarily economic, deeply conservative tenets but certainly not inherently a far-right political program.” But then it peters out or takes a sharp rightward turn, “because it’s the anti-immigrants, the nativists’ appeal that gives these parties strength at the end of the day.”

This dynamic may yet tear the party apart, whether at the leadership or at the voter level. Even the AfD’s recent headline-generating manifesto, Arzheimer pointed out, showed signs of a delicate balancing act. “They very carefully avoided anything that could be used against them in some form of formal process. … There is so much leeway in what they have written. ... It might appeal to hard-core rightwingers but also the famous ‘concerned citizens’—part of a catchphrase in Germany: ‘I’m not a racist but I’m very much concerned about [issues] A, B, C.’” But, he continued, if the AfD “give any reason for the public or media to portray them as yet another NPD I’m sure their support will collapse. Those voters, even if they’re worried about Muslims or immigrants, don’t want to be associated with thugs.”