WE ARE INTERRUPTING THIS BROADCAST because Republicans in Kansas will not pick up the phone. Pollsters made more than 85,000 calls, sent nearly 50,000 texts, and the emergency, the real five-alarm emergency, is that the people who did answer were mostly the people who already wanted to tell you who they're voting for.

Here are the facts, and I need you to stay calm. The Washington Post and George Mason University's Schar School polled 801 likely Kansas voters from Oct. 22 to 26 on the Senate race between Republican Sen. Roger Marshall and Democrat Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor trying to become the first Democratic senator from Kansas since the Great Depression. The poll found Hamilton ahead 52 to 43.

And then, and I cannot stress this enough, the Post itself sounded the alarm on its own poll. The headline, written by the Post's own polling director, Scott Clement: "We polled Kansas. Democrats wanted to talk. Republicans, not so much."

Registered Democrats who answered an interviewer's call were more than twice as likely to finish the survey as registered Republicans. Thirty-two percent versus 12 percent. The Post wrote there's "good reason to suspect that the poll overestimates Democratic candidates' support," and published it anyway, "in the interest of transparency."

Folks. FOLKS. A newspaper ran a poll, read the poll, warned you about the poll, and then printed the poll. That is like a weather service announcing a hurricane, adding that its instrument is a man licking his finger, and then telling everyone to board up the windows.

Let me escalate. Eighty-eight percent of registered Republicans who picked up declined to finish the survey. In Kansas, that's not a statistical problem. That's a culture. These are people who will drive 40 minutes to help a stranger pull a truck out of a ditch, but if a nice voice from a university calls during supper, it is OVER. Click. Back to the pot roast.

Meanwhile, on the other side, apparently a third of the Kansas Democrats who answered were sitting by the phone like it was prom night. "Is it for me? Is it the Post? Mom, get off the line!"

The Post reports its nine-point gap is a clear outlier from the other nine polls released since mid-September. Those range from a five-point Hamilton lead in a poll his own campaign paid for to a one-point edge for Marshall. A CNN-SSRS poll Thursday found "no clear leader," with Hamilton at 49 and Marshall at 45. Emerson has it 49 to 45 as well.

So to summarize this ongoing crisis: the race is close, the Democrats are chatty, the Republicans are busy, and the most accurate number in the entire survey is the one telling you not to trust it.

Officials at this desk are now urging every Kansan to remain indoors, keep the phone on the charger, and under no circumstances answer an unknown number with a 202 area code, because whatever you say, someone in Washington will put it on a chart.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3. Kansas Republicans, if you're out there, and statistically you are, the polls will not hear from you. The ballot box will. It doesn't call during supper.

The Demorat is a satire publication. This article is a comedy roast built on real reported events; jokes, exaggerations and fictional characters are not real news.

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