If you ask any Ontarian with a pulse who isn't somehow connected to the provincial Liberals why Premier Kathleen Wynne is so unpopular, he or she would probably rattle off a whole bunch of the government's boondoggles: the exorbitant hydro prices, the alleged meddling in a provincial byelection, the secret payouts to teachers, the gutting of auditor general powers, the deleted emails, the laughable efforts at liberalized alcohol sales and so forth.

I could go on, but I can feel the province's collective blood pressure rising and it's hard to write a column from the fetal position.

The sheer volume of scandals amassed over the past 14 years of McGuinty/Wynne governance is probably enough to explain why the premier's approval rating has taken a nosedive, but not necessarily to explain the degree of vitriol often personally directed at Wynne. The attacks, mostly on social media, are ruthless, frothing, cruel and occasionally violent; it's not simply that Ontarians don't approve of Wynne — many of them hate her.

<a href="https://twitter.com/Kathleen_Wynne">@Kathleen_Wynne</a> it woulda been so <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Inspiring?src=hash">#Inspiring</a> to see you fall flat on your face breaking yr nose & all covered with blood as u spit teeth. —@DeleteTruckMafk

Steve Paikin, host of The Agenda on TVO, posited in a blog post this week that part of the reason why Wynne's approval is in the tweens could be that "Ontario is a less progressive, more sexist, and more homophobic place than any of us would like to admit."

"If Wynne were a heterosexual man rather than a gay woman," Paikin wrote, "would her approval rating be so low?"

Now, Paikin simply posed the question — he didn't actually answer it — but many readers have taken Paikin's personal position to be implicit in the question. Fair enough, I think: one doesn't ask whether people are harder on the premier because she's gay without believing the premise of the question carries some credibility.

The overwhelming response was, "No, stupid." Which is to be expected; few people — with the exception of the odd unabashed homophobe — would concede that, yes, Wynne's sexual orientation has something to do with their opinion of her. Rather, they say, it's the near decade and a half of the Liberals sticking their fingers in electrical outlets (operating on overpriced green energy, of course) that explains why her approval is in the dumps.

That said, there probably isn't a right or wrong answer here. On the one hand, politicians are not amorphous blobs of policy positions; they are people, with annoying mannerisms, and particular ways of talking, and unique looks and personal histories.

For some people, Wynne's sexual orientation is an issue. Not for everyone, but for some. (Mike Crawley/CBC)

It's not far-fetched to think that some Torontonians found former mayor Rob Ford particularly offensive, for example, not simply because of the outlandish things he said, but because of the way he looked (overweight, red-faced, sweating) as he said them. That's not to say his lies would've been any better tolerated if he were trim and handsome, but it would be foolish to contend that looks don't sometimes colour our impressions. It's not right, but it's human.

For some people, Wynne's sexual orientation is an issue. It might not be "the" reason why she is currently so embarrassingly unpopular in the province, but for some people, it affects their overall impression of her, amplifying their anger. Not everyone, but some.

That said, there really isn't any evidence to show the phenomenon goes beyond that. Kathleen Wynne was a gay woman when she won the reins of the Ontario Liberal Party in 2013, when she won a majority government in the province in 2014 and when she enjoyed a 41 per cent approval rating in September 2014. Some might argue she achieved those feats despite being a gay woman, but if Ontario really were overrun with vestigial bigots, she'd probably have had a much harder time earning those victories, especially tied to a governing party burdened with a laundry list of scandals.

Approval ratings

Paikin asked in his blog whether Wynne's current approval rating (hovering around 12 per cent) would be so low if she were a heterosexual man. That's impossible to say. But we do know that former premiers Dalton McGuinty and Bob Rae both experienced approval levels in the teens (Rae went down to 15 per cent).

Maybe Wynne's identity is a factor. Or maybe her drastic dip in popularity has more to do with the fact she's leading a party that has been in power for an incredibly long time, with too many controversies and examples of mismanagement to count. Fourteen years is an awfully long time for people to feel disrespected by their government, which likely explains why some Ontarians dislike Wynne, the face of that government, so passionately.

It's also possible Wynne's approval rating is so low because most other politicians would have stepped aside by now.

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