In Friday's Radio Derb I said the following thing about today's election in Germany:

It may be … that there is something in the national character of the Germans that damps down, more than elsewhere, people's willingness to be open about their discontents.

We'll get a test of that theory on Sunday, when we either see or don't see a Dinkins-Bradley effect. It's a Dinkins effect in New York, a Bradley effect in Los Angeles, but the idea is the same. When this effect is in play, people tell pollsters they'll vote for the politically correct candidate — Tom Bradley for Mayor of L.A. in 1982, David Dinkins for Mayor of New York in 1989 — but then, in the actual voting booth, a significant number do otherwise.

If [the National Conservative, immigration-restrictionist party] AfD gets a bigger vote share than the nine or ten percent they're showing in the pre-election polls, that'll be a Dinkins-Bradley effect. [At 31m32s here.]

The latest from the exit polls at early afternoon Sunday EST (so voting in Germany is pretty much finished) have the AfD at over 13 percent, which suggests a modest Dinkins-Bradley effect.

It also guarantees that AfD will be the third biggest party represented in the Bundestag (national legislature), in which they formerly had no representation at all.