| President Donald Trump got upset over the weekend about a recent Fox News poll: "My worst polls have been coming from Fox. There's something going on with Fox, and I don't like it." As several people pointed out, the key here is that Trump is a conspiracy theorist — or at least, because we don't know what politicians are really thinking, he certainly acts like a conspiracy theorist. Trump acts as if he simply can't imagine that Fox News polls are professional and politically neutral, because he can't imagine anything as being professional and politically neutral. As it happens, Fox's polling operation is well-respected among the people who know about such things, which means that they use polling best practices and publish whatever results they happen to find. So a couple of things about that. One is that Fox News itself, which we know is one of Trump's main sources for news, encourages that sort of thinking — given that its entire business plan is based on the notion that there's no such thing as a neutral, nonpartisan news media, so therefore viewers should only trust the outlets that match their partisan orientation. Fox didn't start that idea, which goes back decades. But it certainly has encouraged it. Another is that of course the "neutral" media was never purely neutral, just as science (including social science) or anything else is never purely neutral. What is true, however, is that news coverage has its own sets of professional standards and biases that have nothing at all to do with Democratic/Republican or liberal/conservative cleavages. And that a news media that primarily follows (or tries to follow) those standards is very different from partisan news sources. Because "neutral" isn't actually neutral, there are going to be plenty of times when one party or the other will benefit from professional standards, but that doesn't mean those standards are deliberate attempts at partisanship. In the case of the nonpartisan media, avoiding partisan advantage is actually one of the standards they strive for. Which, as many have noted, can itself create results that help one party and hurt the other. And the other thing about Trump's complaint is that … it isn't even true. Fox News reported Trump's approval rating at 43%. The FiveThirtyEight estimate based on all the polls puts Trump, as of Sunday, when he was complaining, at 42.1%. The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls has Trump's approval at 43.7%. In other words, Fox's poll isn't one of Trump's worst recent ones; it's right in the middle. NBC is also at 43%, Gallup at 41%, Ipsos at 42%, Morning Consult at 42%. Indeed, The FiveThirtyEight system, which accounts for each poll's bias, adjusts the Fox result from 43% to 41%, which indicates that it typically comes in about two percentage points over the average of all polls. (That's not a very large adjustment, and doesn't mean that Fox's poll isn't reliable, just that it very slightly favors Republicans, or at least a higher Trump approval). Trump certainly could just be making stuff up. On the other hand, he frequently tweets out Rasmussen polls, which are notoriously unreliable, and hugely favor Trump. So I suppose it's possible that his staff only gives him Rasmussen polls — and perhaps any others that come in very good for him — and the only ones he sees on his own are those he sees while watching Fox News. In which case it would be understandable that he finds the Fox ones inexplicably low. (A programming note: I'm pulling double duty this week as David Leonhardt has invited me to fill in on his newsletter over at the New York Times while he's taking some time off. So I'll have fewer links than usual over here. Back to normal soon). 1. Stacie E. Goddard at the Monkey Cage on buying Greenland. 2. Kevin Drum on draining the swamp. Yup: "draining the swamp" always had to do with partisan victories. And that's a generous way to put it. 3. And my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Tobin Harshaw speaks with Ankit Panda about that Russian missile accident. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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