Dan Arnold
Chief Strategy Officer
Dan loves data. He has a Masters in Statistics from the University of Alberta, and plays around with spreadsheets in his spare time. During his 14 years in the research industry, he has used data to help clients better understand their customers, political parties better understand voters, and governments better understand their citizens.
Dan started his research career at Pollara, where he led projects for banks, hospitals, environmental groups, magazines, telecoms, and transportation companies. He was regularly quoted in media stories on behalf of his clients who publicly released polling data.
In 2014, he joined the Trudeau Liberals as their Lead Research Strategist, overseeing the party’s research in the lead up to and during their historic third-to-first 2015 election victory. He moderated focus groups, led the nightly tracking, and used his seat projection model to map the path to government. And he did it all again when they were re-elected in 2019 and 2021.
Following the 2015 election, Dan joined the Prime Minister’s Office senior staff, as Director of Research & Advertising. Through this role, he led the Government of Canada’s extensive quantitative and qualitative research program, digging into the issues facing virtually every sector in Canada. He kept tabs on what mattered to businesses and “real people” outside the Parliament Hill bubble, and gave hundreds of engaging presentations to staffers, caucus, and Cabinet.
Through his work overseeing the Government of Canada’s extensive advertising program, he was active in all steps of the advertising process from concept testing to production to audience targeting to analyzing campaign effectiveness. This kept him on the cutting edge of the latest advertising tools and tactics being used to reach target audiences.
Now back at Pollara as Chief Strategy Officer, Dan starts every project for his clients with a deep understanding of what matters to Canadians. From there he finds the story the data is telling, and uses this to help his clients reach their objectives.
