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Photo by Rick T. Wilking/Pool via AP

The most recent example of a high-profile attempt to meddle in a foreign election remains the Russian disinformation campaign targeted at the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Even then, it’s almost impossible to determine how much of an effect it had, with some pundits saying it swung the election and others saying it had close to zero effect.

“Much more remains to be learned about the effects of these types of online activities, but people should not assume they had huge effects,” wrote Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, on the New York Times’ Upshot blog.

That’s because campaigning, in general, is not very effective. Nyhan writes that a recent analysis of various campaign activities finds their “average effect in general elections is zero.”

There's a lot of research going on in terms of what the effect could be

That study won’t do wonders for the morale of campaign workers but it should calm the nerves of anyone concerned about Russian meddling in Canada’s next election.

The foreign campaigns are also dwarfed by domestic activity.

Facebook announced that about $100,000 in ad spending was made from suspicious accounts operating out of Russia, between June 2015 and May 2017, targeted at the U.S. election. That’s no small change, but it’s compared to roughly $2.4 billion in campaign spending by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and other contestants during the primaries.

Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo

The Russian accounts were generally engaged in spreading memes on Facebook and retweeting and amplifying certain messages on Twitter. One photo that was tabled at a House committee in the United States showed Satan and Jesus arm-wrestling, with Satan saying “If I win, Clinton wins.”