Let us accept, from the very start, that the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford appears unfit for public office. His personal problems and obvious lack of self-control — reading at the wheel of his car, going to KFC while on a highly-publicized diet, showing up drunk at public functions — are a source of considerable embarrassment inside and outside of the city. He hangs out with drug dealers, and — if reports of a video showing him smoking crack cocaine are reliable — he has a drug problem.

Even if we set this aside, and look at his policies and political agenda, he’s a disaster. Rob Ford lacks a coherent, consistent plan for the development of transit in Toronto. On files of central concern, he appears poorly briefed or plainly ignorant. He is in over his head.

Yet, despite all of this, Ford still enjoys the support of somewhere between a third to a half of Torontonians polled. How can this be?

From the beginning of his campaign for the mayoralty, the media coverage of Ford has betrayed a distinct snobbery and even a contempt. After all, who could support such an overweight lout, and one from Etobicoke at that?

We are constantly reminded that Ford draws his support from the “suburbs,” from the parts of Toronto that were grafted onto Old Toronto by Mike Harris and which now act as a drain on the city’s tax base and its transit system. Ford’s supporters are those who clog downtown streets when they drive in to work.

His supporters are not the sensible Torontonians who live in downtown condos or the surrounding leafy neighbourhoods. Those Torontonians take transit to work, or bike. They are urbane and multicultural. They are progressive, having supported Ford’s final opponents, George Smitherman and Joe Pantalone, en masse.

Except that they aren’t. The reality is that Ford’s support was widespread, even if it was strongest in Etobicoke and Scarborough. Of Toronto’s 44 wards, Ford won the plurality of votes in all but 13. His poorest showing was still a respectable 22 per cent. He was outpaced by the left-wing Pantalone in just one ward.

Ford’s performance is equally impressive if stacked up against his predecessors. His vote appears more widely spread than David Miller’s was in either of his elections. It is likewise broader than that earned by either John Tory or Barbara Hall in their failed bids. The only candidate to match him on city-wide support was the great sophisticate Mel Lastman, in his 2000 re-election.

The second reality is that Toronto exists as a multicultural place more plainly and vibrantly in those unwanted boroughs — Etobicoke and Scarborough — than in the central parts of Toronto.

And in those places, Ford’s support remains impressively strong.

Despite these realities, Ford and his supporters are treated contemptuously, and have been from the beginning of his mayoralty. This scorn comes in two forms.

First, in the plain double standard the media have applied in dealing with Ford. Second, and more subtly, in the manner in which his coalition of supporters is described.