javascript - Ajax call not returning correct variable

Ajax is asynchronous. So the execution continues without waiting for the return value. You could do something like this:

var getTotalEntries = function(query) {
  var total;      
  $.ajax({
    url: url,
    data: query,
    dataType: 'jsonp',

    success: function(data) {
      console.log(data.total);
      total = data.total;

      //pass the total value here
      processReturn(total);
    },
    //you may want to add a error block
    error: function(e, xhr, settings, exception){


    }
  });

  return total;     
};   

Code the handling method to process the total:

var processReturn = function(total) {

   //use the total value here    
   console.log(total);
};

That should take care of it.