Voters in Germany's largest state, Bavaria, choose a new parliament on Sunday, after a very nasty election campaign in which populist upstarts have rattled the status quo.
The far-right AfD, tied in second place, is hoping for a big result.
Its leaders say they are being physically attacked or threatened.
But their opponents accuse them of twisting the truth for political gain, by playing into a narrative of victimisation.
Either way the debate is unusually toxic.
Days before the vote, Tino Chrupalla, the co-leader of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), was taken to intensive care after feeling unwell during an election rally in Bavaria.
The party describes it as a "physical attack" and AfD supporters on social media are convinced that Chrupalla was injected with a toxin.
Police are investigating, but so far say they have no evidence he was poisoned.
Mr Chrupalla is now out of hospital, but it could take another few days for the results of tests to be confirmed, during which time speculation is only growing.
In September, the AfD's other co-leader, Alice Weidel, was taken by Swiss police from her home in Switzerland to a safe house because of security concerns. The party says there was a risk of an attack against her and her family.
A few weeks later, she delivered a speech to a rally via video link rather than in person because, according to the AfD organisers, "she wasn't allowed out of the safe house" for her own safety.
In fact she was on holiday abroad. On the same day as the rally, she was spotted in a beach restaurant in Mallorca with her partner.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the Greens are hate figures for some right-wingers in Bavaria.
At one rally last month, a large stone was thrown at Bavarian Greens co-leader Katharina Schulze. At another event she was attending, a mock-stall was placed at the entrance selling tomatoes and stones to be thrown.
Aside from Bavaria, the wealthy western German state of Hesse is also holding parliamentary elections on Sunday, meaning that in total a quarter of German voters - some 14 million people - are eligible to vote in a crucial mid-term test for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government.
Bavaria was once a calm, self-satisfied region, run by the Bavarian conservative CSU almost without interruption since World War Two.
In beer tents CSU politicians traditionally campaign in local dress as they swill drinks and proudly tout the region's remarkably successful combination of folksy traditions and high-tech economic success: Laptops and Lederhosen is the Bavarian brand.
