A message from Brian Cooper, Managing Director at Omnisis

We were recently approached to do some constituency polling for the Gorton + Denton by-election – it had been a while since we’d dipped our toes into those particular waters, so I was a little nervous.

Given the, shall we say, colourful nature of the contest – featuring (among others) a disgraced former academic turned GB News host and former pollster (the one who ate his own book on live TV), a working-class former plumber, a sitting Manchester City councillor, and perhaps even a pig (thank you, Sir Oink A Lot), it was certainly an interesting one to return to.

During the campaign, our methodology and figures were rather aggressively described as “out of whack”.

It was therefore pleasing to see the final result, and to find that our numbers were the closest of all those published.

At one point I was advised to “get a grip man, for the good of our industry.”

Which was nice, but I’m quite comfortable with the grip that we’ve got.