I provided source material for the Washington Times article the way I found it: in the paper. It would have taken two seconds to look it up. Since you did indicate a desire for them, here are the links to the James Irvine foundation's mission statement:
http://www.irvine.org/about_irvine/mission.shtml
I do not link to the LA Times because it requires registration, which most people do not have anyway. And I don't like to provide links (which gives money) to news sources who don't allow fair use and who require registration.
I regret if saying "for the LA Times" created the impression that the LA Times funded the poll. The PPIC did apparently give full publishing permissions to the LA Times, and the poll was apparently undertaken with the understanding that the LA Times would likely publish it (given the stated intention of the funding is for mass communication.) If you look at the article
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poll25aug25,0,7101982.story?coll=la-home-headlines
I think you'll find my wording reasonable.
And you bet I meant to imply that the poll was biased! The LA Times has a history of choosing polls to advance their agenda; the fact that the poll was funded by a partisan special-interest group and given to them as part of a campaign to influence mass media towards desired political outcomes hardly vindicates the LA Times from the accusation of bias!!!
As for the Bustamente poll, if you want to squabble semantics, I'd say my description (calling three weeks "days") is a lot more accurate than yours (saying it was in the first month of the campaign). I don't have the sources off-hand, but there was an uproar on Free Republic about that LA Times poll, other polls had already shown Schwarzenegger taking a commanding lead.
Furthermore, the poll was released after Ueberroth and Simon had dropped out. Ueberroth (sp?) dropped out during the poll taking, and although he was listed in the results of the poll, he was not much of a factor. Simon had quit long ago. Your intention sure seemed like it was to state that the LA Times results were off because Simon and Ueberroth were dragging down Schwarzenegger; that certainly was not the case. The LA Times only showed Arnold winning long after his victory was a very fore-gone conclusion, but they had tried to breathe life into Bustamente absurdly late.
And lastly, according to the LA Times article I linked to, PPIC DID poll on Proposition 75. But they buried it in the volumuous text of the article, and, precisely as I stated, did not include the results in their summation. That PPIC website also obscures the undesired poll result certainly lends credibility to PPIC or LA Times. Before you accuse people of shoddy reporting, you should read the entire article.
I don't mind FReeper nit-picking of articles. In fact, I rely on it when I read others' vanities. I know that FReepers do not let misrepresentation stand, even when it bolsters conservative arguments. And that's very valuable for our credibility.
But you seem just simply argumentative.
Thank you for the response and the links. I did not intend to be argumentative but I do strive for honest representation. As such, I may have overreacted since the subject SurveyUSA poll is the same one that had already been posted here multiple times and highly criticized. I also don't think that titles alleging "lies", that are not substantiated as such, do much for credibility.
Regarding the PPIC poll, you gave me links to an article discussing an August PPIC poll. That would explain the discrepancies. I had wrongly assumed that you were referring to the recent PPIC poll published in October (based on September info) since that is the one being cited in most other media, as well.
http://www.ppic.org/main/series.asp?i=12
Again, thanks for the reply.