Out of sync with reality

CanWest serves up some undiluted Harper spin in reporting on a new gun-registry poll. The national results:

Overall, the survey results show that 48 per cent of Canadians want the government to maintain a hand gun registry, but support plans to end the long-gun registry, while 47 per cent want to keep both the hand gun and long-gun registries, according to the survey.

Now, this would seem to be a fairly appropriate time for a headline along the lines of, say, "Country split on (gun registry)...". But then, that wouldn't do much to help the cause of forcing a change which would undo the current work put into the registry. So instead, CanWest ignores the general balance to try to make it sound like the provinces with a majority in favour of keeping the long-gun registry are a rare exception to a national consensus.

The most egregious spin is in the headline ("Ont., Que. out of sync on gun registry"), but the article itself also spends more time discussing the provincial divide than noting that there's nothing even remotely approaching a national consensus either for or against the registry.

Another interesting tidbit: take a look at the second question in the poll:

The survey also found there's widespread support for the idea of dismantling at least part of the gun registry and funnelling more money into hiring more police officers.

Nearly half, or 49 per cent, of those surveyed said they want the government to maintain the hand gun and long-gun registries and put more money toward hiring police, while 45 per cent said they want the long-gun registry dismantled and greater funds put toward hiring more police officers.

It's not entirely clear how the two issues are supposed to relate to each other, as it should be obvious that maintaining the gun registry and funding police officers aren't mutually exclusive. Indeed, the only people who seem interested in trying to conflate the two are the Cons. But despite the Cons' effort to link the two, when police funding is brought into the picture, public support for Harper's position actually drops.

Based on that result, it seems that hiring more police officers is a higher priority for most Canadians than scrapping the registry: when it's recognized that it's possible to fund both police officers and the long-gun registry, that position wins more support than either of the options involving the registry alone. With that prioritization in mind, a fair poll surrounding the Cons' plan should also consider whether Canadians want to see RCMP resources used up running a revamped registry. And it seems highly likely that presented with an accurate portrayal of the Cons' plan as opposed to the status quo, a majority of Canadians would support the latter.