BERLIN—Germany has entered uncharted territory and its captain is navigating by sight.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and her estranged interior minister were meeting Monday evening for a final attempt at resolving a fight that threatens to split a conservative bloc that has operated for much of the post-war era and topple her government.
After fruitless weekend negotiations on immigration policy, there is little room left for compromise between the chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union and Horst Seehofer’s smaller Christian Social Union. But though there is no map to follow, there are a handful of scenarios that could play out.
Mr. Seehofer has threatened to resign. The German government has been operating as a coalition between the conservative bloc and the center-left Social Democrats. If he takes his party out of the coalition, that would leave the CDU and the SPD two seats short of a parliamentary majority.
The CDU and CSU have shared a parliamentary group for decades and there is no precedent for a German government falling due to a split in its largest ruling party.
But a collapse of the coalition wouldn’t necessarily mean an end to the chancellorship of Ms. Merkel, who remains one of the country’s most popular politicians according to all polls.
“I don’t think her authority is undermined,” said Tilman Mayer, professor of political science at Bonn University, pointing to her success in securing an immigration deal at a European Union summit last Friday. “Her rating are surprisingly good given the circumstances.”
If she loses her majority, Ms. Merkel would be left with at least three choices.
First, she could continue as head of a minority government, pursuing ad-hoc coalitions in the lower house around key legislative projects.
Andrea Römmele, professor of politics at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, said Ms. Merkel’s high ratings meant the chancellor might even be able to finish her term because she would only need to secure two additional votes to pass legislation.
Second, Ms. Merkel could try to engineer a new majority by replacing the CSU with another coalition partner, such as the left-leaning Greens or the pro-business Free Democratic Party.
But bringing in the Greens, perhaps the most pro-immigration party on the political spectrum, could risk splitting Ms. Merkel’s CDU, where many lawmakers, while loyal to the chancellor, want a tougher anti-immigration line. Most Green leaders have also sounded skeptical for opposite reasons.
Likewise, inviting the FDP, with its hard line on immigration, could be hard to swallow for the SPD, which faces grassroots pressure to move more to the left. FDP leaders said at the weekend they weren’t interested in entering a new coalition under Ms. Merkel and would favor fresh elections.
A new ballot could be Ms. Merkel’s last option to break the impasse.
Germany’s constitution makes it hard to hold snap elections—a reaction to the endemic instability of the pre-war years.
In order to provoke a snap vote, the chancellor could call a vote of confidence in parliament and engineer its failure. This would leave the decision on whether to hold new elections to the country’s president. A ballot, which would then have to take place within 60 days, would probably happen in the autumn.
Ulrich Speck, senior visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin, said such a vote wouldn’t lead to the collapse of the political center.
The CSU appeared to have misjudged Germany as ripe for a nationalist rebellion, he said, when what voters appear to want is tighter entry requirements. "Germans want more orderly process and control. It’s about following the law. It’s not about rising against the system itself. It’s a call to correct some errors or mistakes.”
But opinion surveys suggest most establishment parties would suffer some losses and the political deadlock would remain.
A Forsa poll published Saturday showed CDU/CSU and SPD would emerge just short of a majority if a poll were to be held today, while the nativist anti-establishment AfD would raise its share of the vote.
The radical Left Party expected to get 10% of the vote, meaning that two groupings once considered too extreme by all other parties to enter a coalition could end up occupying more than a quarter of parliament’s seats.
The political ground could be shifting again between now and the election, said Hermann Binkert at the INSA polling group. Ms. Merkel has taken a tougher line on immigration since the EU’s deal last week to set up zones in North Africa to keep asylum seekers. That could lose her support in the center but might leave her with a net gain, he said.
“The majority of Germans have been in favor of a restrictive migration policy since early 2016," Mr. Binkert added.
— Andrea Thomas and James Marson contributed to this article.
Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com
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