However Merkel’s refugee gambit plays out, what’s perhaps most astonishing is that she attempted it in the first place.

In August 2015, a poll published by the public-broadcasting consortium ARD showed that 34 percent of respondents thought the number of refugees being admitted by Germany at the time was about right, with 38 percent favoring allowing in fewer refugees. Only 23 percent of the German public felt the country should be taking in more refugees. In this context, Merkel’s decision first to invite in thousands of migrants stranded in Hungary in early September, and then to maintain in subsequent months a relatively liberal policy toward the continuing influx, seemed like a giant political risk.

Politicians getting so far out ahead of public opinion is “pretty unusual,” said Barry Burden, a political-science professor and the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “When we see examples of true leadership it’s usually on topics that matter only to a segment of the population, or that have a technical element that makes [the issue] difficult for most of the public to understand.”

In U.S. politics, “the mythology is that a president who’s a good communicator can go on the campaign trail and convince the public to come along with him,” Burden noted. “But when the political scientists have looked at the evidence over the years, even when it’s Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or someone we think of as an exceptional communicator, they were not especially effective.” The closest recent American analogue to Merkel’s move, he said, might be George W. Bush’s campaign to privatize Social Security when he was running for president in 2000. “As he gave more speeches the public became less supportive, not more supportive,” Burden said, and Bush ultimately retreated from the position—but not without consequence: “Republicans have paid a price among senior citizens to some degree.”

One potential explanation for Merkel’s boldness is that the German political system offers more shelter from public opinion than some others, particularly the American one, according to David Art, a political-science professor at Tufts University who focuses on comparative politics. In Germany’s “plodding” parliamentary democracy, political parties stand between the public and politicians. They choose which politicians to place on the ballot rather than relying on primary elections as in the United States. “Germany did not want to have, after Hitler, any sort of [personality-driven political] system,” Art said.

“On top of all that it’s a four- or five-party system where the normal state of affairs is going to be a coalition government,” he continued. “Even if public opinion is solidly against the refugee crisis, a party like the Greens may want to talk a lot about refugees because it’s important to their voter base, the 10 or 12 percent of the population that they can hope to mobilize in a national election.”