A shadow is looming over Germany's election: the specter of the far-left Linke party, heir to the communists who once ruled East Germany, coming in from the political wilderness.
At least, that is what Angela Merkel's conservatives want voters to think. Behind in polls just days before Sunday's vote, her would-be successor is warning that Social Democrats, if victorious, would let the far-left into power.
"You have to have a clear position on the extremists," conservative candidate Armin Laschet told his Social Democratic rival Olaf Scholz during a televised debate earlier this month. "I don't understand why it's so hard for you to say 'I won't enter a coalition with this party'."