Political plot or Foolish Journalism

Apparently a recent survey showed that
As Usual, Public Wants Lower Deficit Without Cutting Spending or Raising Taxes.

As usual its interesting to look at the details. TThis is what they said

"Fifty-six percent of respondents said that they were not willing to pay more in taxes in order to reduce the deficit, and nearly as many said they were not willing for the government to provide fewer services in areas such as health care, education and defense spending."

Now lets use a couple of brain cells and ask ouselves what the likely positions of a thinking person will be.

1) the steriotypical left leaning poor person will say "I dont want to pay more taxes, however the rich should pay more taxes and we should increase services and we should decrease the deficit."
2) the steriotypical right leaning rich individual will say "I dont want to pay more taxes, we should cut services and maybe we should decrease the deficit"
3) a debt tolerant person (particularly in these recession times) "dont increase taxes, dont decrease services dont decrease the deficit

so my simplified survey gets
66% dont raise taxes (on me) to reduce the deficit, and
66% dont reduce services to reduce the deficit
and 66% decrease the deficit

So what does that say? well the individuals may all be quite rational - it is jsut that when there are many options it isnt surprising htat less than 50% will support even the most popular one.

So why the title? well surely the media knows this - and they know how the steriotypical individuals feel so why do they want to eroniously perpetuiate the idea that the public doesn't know what it wants?