YouGov results underline that it was the real winner of Britain's inconclusive election

A willingness to publicly stand against the crowd has done wonders for the data firm's reputation

YouGov stood out from the crowd by predicting Labour's unexpectedly strong election performance (PA)

The real winner of the General Election? With Britain's Parliament hung, it was the only company to predict that state of affairs: YouGov.

The latest results from the rapidly globalising polling and data firm make that abundantly clear.

Revenue increased by 9 per cent, smoothing for the impact of currency movements, and by 21 per cent otherwise. Operating profits leapt by a third.

Polling, the activity for which this business is best known, actually accounts for only a tiny proportion of that.

YouGov’s biggest money spinner is data, and in particular the big stuff. The company boasts an enormous “participative panel” made up of 5m people providing a continuous stream of it.

Want a question answered? Put it into the system and you’ll get an answer very quickly. Worried about the perception of your brand? You can track it daily if you want, and see how well your marketing is working in real time.

In an age where knowledge equals power equals profit, YouGov is a sat in a sweet spot, and it is ploughing an increasingly rich furrow.

Why, then, even bother making yourself a hostage to fortune by engaging in the risky business of political opinion polling?

Simple: marketing. The company benefited hugely through its work with US broadcaster CBS during that country’s general election. Corporate clients heard the name, and knocked on its door. The US is now its biggest revenue, and profit, generator.

But the biggest coup came in the company's home market, in which it was at one point the subject of ridicule.

“Want a good laugh, click on YouGov’s constituency prediction page,” Tweeted one snarky commentator. “Caterbury is going Labour Lol!” Needless to say, it's now a Labour seat.

“Spent the day laughing at yet another stupid poll from YouGov,” another sneered (you do sometimes wonder about how limited the lives of these trolls are).

Both of those were featured in the investor presentation, but the company can be forgiven for crowing.

Its describes the innovation that proved the critics (badly) wrong as (deep breath) ‘Multilevel Regression & Post-stratification’. Or MRP for those of us who find that sort of gibberish to be something of a tongue twister.

A mouthful it may be, but you can’t argue with MRP's results. YouGov got it right when others, including both the main parties' campaigns, were wide of the mark.

Publicly standing against the groupthink of the crowd and getting it right by doing so? That's marketing gold. You don't need Big Data to see that, and it probably put the company at the top of an awful lot of potential customers’ shortlists, in the UK and beyond.

As for the snarky Tweeters? They’ve gone quiet. YouGov bosses and shareholders are having the last laugh, and, even in the face of Brexit, it looks like they’ll be chuckling for some time to come.