Can you guess which party’s voters don’t think ‘poofter’ is offensive?
UKIP voters are the least likely to find the word “poofter” offensive, a poll has found.
The party’s then-parliamentary candidate Kerry Smith stepped down this week, after tapes of phone calls leaked in which he referred to gay people as “poofters” and joked about the party’s LGBT membership group.
Despite the party defending him, Mr Smith stepped down after the rant, in which he also used the racial slur “chinky”.
However, polling by YouGov for the Sun has found that UKIP members are by far less likely than voters of any other party to find either word offensive.
Across the general population, 60 percent of people agree ‘poofter’ is offensive, while 27 percent say it is not, and 13 percent unsure. 49 percent say ‘chinky’ is offensive, with 36 percent saying it’s not, and 15 percent unsure.
Among voters of Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, however, the vast majority of people see no issue whatsoever with the words.
Just 24 percent of UKIP voters think ‘poofter’ is offensive – far less than the Lib Dems on and Labour, both on 73 percent, and the Conservatives on 40 percent.
Meanwhile, only 15 percent of the party’s voters think ‘chinky’ is offensive – less than 39 percent of Tories, 64 percent of Labour voters, and 65 percent of Lib Dems.
Just 10 percent of UKIP voters said both ‘chinky’ and ‘poofter’ were offensive.
Nigel Farage previously attempted to justify the incident by saying: “I haven’t heard of any other cases of [homophobia or racism in UKIP] in a very long time.
“Kerry Smith is a rough diamond. He’s a council house boy from the East End of London, left school early, and talks and speaks in a way a lot of people from that background do. We can pretend if you like… If you and your mates are going out for a Chinese, what do you say you’re going for?”
