Semi Bird offers hilariously incoherent response to NPI’s new gubernatorial polling

Despite hav­ing recent­ly been oust­ed from the Rich­land school board in a recall by his own con­ser­v­a­tive con­stituents, ultra MAGA guber­na­to­r­i­al hope­ful Semi Bird is still pub­licly main­tain­ing that his cam­paign can go the dis­tance and vault him into the gov­er­nor’s man­sion. So on Thurs­day, when NPI’s lat­est guber­na­to­r­i­al polling came out and showed Bird way behind fel­low Repub­li­can Dave Reichert and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, he was­n’t happy.

In a lengthy, hilar­i­ous­ly inco­her­ent post on Twit­ter, Bird strug­gled to respond to the num­bers that show his cam­paign is not gain­ing momen­tum, vac­il­lat­ing from denounc­ing it to look­ing for a sil­ver lin­ing in the data. It might be the weird­est and also most enter­tain­ing rant ever pub­lished in response to an NPI poll finding.

Let’s go through it and you can see what I mean.

And here we go! The Uni-par­ty pro­pa­gan­da machine is in full oper­a­tion to ensure that their top-two can­di­dates are in the gen­er­al elec­tion next year, thus influ­enc­ing elec­tion out­comes and muf­fling the voice of “we the people.”

I’ve heard plen­ty of peo­ple argue that both major polit­i­cal par­ties are cor­rupt over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the phrase “Uni-par­ty pro­pa­gan­da machine” before. Very inter­est­ing. So, is every­one not on board with Semi Bird part of a con­spir­a­cy to keep him out of the gov­er­nor’s mansion?

This should not come as a sur­prise to any­one. It’s time to unite as cit­i­zens com­mit­ted to a “One-Wash­ing­ton” move­ment, not defined or manip­u­lat­ed by the Uni-par­ty establishment.

Good luck try­ing to fig­ure out what any of that is sup­posed to mean.

If there’s already a “Uni-par­ty” in exis­tence, then why do we need a “One-Wash­ing­ton” move­ment to com­pete with it? And why would such a move­ment even be desir­able giv­en the impli­ca­tion that “the Uni-par­ty” is bad?

FACTS: We have been endorsed by over 14 GOP coun­ties and have pledges of sup­port from Democ­rats, Inde­pen­dents, and Repub­li­cans alike.

There’s no such thing as “GOP coun­ties” — what Bird means here is Repub­li­can coun­ty par­ty orga­ni­za­tions. Wash­ing­ton has thir­ty-nine coun­ties and each of them, or at least most of them, have a Repub­li­can cen­tral committee.

We have more mul­ti-demo­graph­ic sup­port than any GOP can­di­date in the last 40 years.

Inter­est­ing claim. Where’s the evi­dence for it?

We have dri­ven over 40,000 miles and cam­paigned in almost every coun­ty in the state.

Great, so Semi has done a lot of dri­ving around. Con­grat­u­la­tions on that. Hope you’ve had a chance to enjoy some of our state’s won­der­ful land­scapes, Semi.

THE POLL: North­west PROGRESSIVE Institute

This non-val­i­dat­ed poll with a 700-per­son sam­ple group solic­its results from approx­i­mate­ly 18 peo­ple per coun­ty. As a trained researcher, this method­ol­o­gy is heav­i­ly flawed and non-rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the vot­ing populace.

Despite claim­ing to be “a trained researcher,” Semi clear­ly does not under­stand how cred­i­ble pub­lic opin­ion research is obtained. Polling makes use of sam­ples by neces­si­ty, and sam­ples need not be enor­mous to be prop­er­ly representative.

The com­po­si­tion of the sam­ple is what mat­ters, not the size.

Wash­ing­ton’s pop­u­la­tion and vot­ing elec­torate not even­ly dis­trib­uted across its thir­ty-nine coun­ties. Some coun­ties are real­ly big, like King, Sno­homish, and What­com. Oth­ers are real­ly tiny, like Garfield, Wahki­akum, or Stevens. If the tiny coun­ties had just as much rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the sam­ple as the big ones, the sam­ple would be unrep­re­sen­ta­tive and worth­less. It is non­sen­si­cal to char­ac­ter­ize our sam­ple as hav­ing “results from approx­i­mate­ly 18 peo­ple per county.”

From which pool were these “pre­sumed” vot­ers drawn, per­haps selec­tive­ly from the Pro­gres­sive Institute?

Like our results post clear­ly says, this sur­vey was con­duct­ed for NPI by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling, who we have worked with for over ten years. They han­dled the field­ing. 42% of the vot­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed were inter­viewed on their land­lines and took the sur­vey using inter­ac­tive voice response tech­nol­o­gy, while 58% were recruit­ed by text to take the sur­vey online. If Semi were a trained researcher like he claims, he would­n’t be embar­rass­ing him­self with sil­ly com­ments like this.

Our stand­ing at 10% con­trasts stark­ly with the 5% of a cur­rent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor who, despite amass­ing over $923,000 in cam­paign funds, falls behind.

The polling’s unre­li­a­bil­i­ty becomes evi­dent, espe­cial­ly as we antic­i­pate cap­tur­ing the unde­cid­ed 22% of vot­ers. Our appeal lies in being a non-estab­lish­ment can­di­date, offer­ing a non-par­ti­san plat­form focused on uni­ty and com­mon sense.

These last two para­graphs are my favorite part.

If Semi does­n’t think our polling is cred­i­ble or reli­able, then why is he talk­ing about cap­tur­ing the 22% of vot­ers who said they were not sure? And why brag that he has twice as much sup­port as State Sen­a­tor Mark Mullet?

He could have just said “we saw NPI’s polling and we think it’s worthless.”

But nope… he decid­ed to post this instead.

If noth­ing else, it’s a time­ly reminder that not every­one who runs for an impor­tant posi­tion of pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ty pos­sess­es good judg­ment or qualifications.