What's going on here? In short, clever polling. Both polls were carefully constructed to elicit the answers they wanted. The Third Way poll, for example, asked voters if they wanted politicians to "compromise" and "make changes" -- it didn't mention "cuts," and it didn't dig into the specifics of any proposed "changes" to entitlement programs. When you keep it vague like that, of course people will agree. But the answer is almost meaningless: Do people want entitlements to change to be more generous, or do they want the sort of private account or voucher-based systems Paul Ryan has proposed? This poll doesn't tell us.

The unions' poll, meanwhile, didn't ask about deficits in isolation -- it counterposed deficit reduction with "creating jobs" and gave people a binary choice between the two. Again, given this choice, it's almost a given that respondents will pick "job creation" as their preferred priority, and indeed, 67 percent did. But how do people want this job creation to be accomplished? Chances are if you replaced that phrase with "government spending," which is what's really meant by the question, you'd get a different answer, and if you dug down into specifics on how to create jobs, you'd likely get far less unanimity.

It's clear what both these groups are trying to do. Third Way wants politicians to think even Democrats want to rein in entitlement spending, when that's pretty clearly not the case. The unions want politicians to think voters don't care about deficits, when that's also pretty clearly not the case.

So what do the American people really want out of a deal to resolve the fiscal cliff? It's best to turn to a poll that doesn't come from an interest group for the answer. National Journal's Congressional Connection polling series, conducted by Princeton Survey Research, has asked a number of detailed questions on fiscal issues and the budget in recent months. Here's what it found:

* Do voters want to reduce the deficit? Yes, but they care more about jobs and education. Three quarters call reducing the deficit "very important," but an even larger majority, 86 percent, say addressing the job situation is, and 76 percent say the same about improving public education.

* Do voters want entitlement cuts? Nope. A slim majority, 51 percent, say keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits untouched is more important than reducing the deficit (34 percent). A plurality, 36 percent, say the idea that Medicare and Social Security could be cut is their biggest worry about any deficit deal; raising their taxes was the concern of 24 percent. A majority also said raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 should not be part of the deal, and a plurality, 49 percent, didn't want Medicare and Medicaid spending to be limited. Voters also don't want to see a freeze on domestic nondefense spending on things like education, parks, and housing, by a 57-35 margin.