There is no evidence that Cambridge Analytica’s now notorious data harvesting and ''psychographics” had any significant impact on the 2016 US presidential election, says one of America’s leading political scientists, Professor Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Centre for Politics.

While the collection of unsuspecting Facebook users’ personal information might have been unethical - even illegal - Professor Sabato notes that the 2016 election took place in a heavily polarised electorate in which more than 90 per cent of voters known to lean towards the Democratic Party ended up voting for it and 90 per cent of those leaning Republican voted for the GOP.

Those figures suggest to him that the most effective campaign strategy to both parties last year was that first articulated by Abraham Lincoln - “find them, vote them” - meaning parties should simply find their voters and convince them to vote.

According to Professor Sabato, consultants attached to winning campaigns always boast to potential clients that it was their contribution that swayed the electorate, and Cambridge Analytica has been doing so since Trump’s victory.

But he does not believe that Cambridge Analytica managed to create a technological blackbox that could subtly change voters’ views.