Republicans clinched control of the US Senate on Tuesday, unseating Democratic Senators in at least six states in a predictable midterm result that will see President Barack Obama spend his last two years in office with a Republican-run Congress.

The so-called Republican wave was widely anticipated and blamed on the president’s sagging approval ratings, in what is known in Washington as the “six-year-itch”. (At the same point in his own eight-year tenure, George W. Bush suffered approval ratings of 30 percent. Obama is currently on 40.) 

No one issue monopolised the campaign, leaving many Republican candidates focused heavily on emphasising the obvious link between their Democratic rivals and the unpopular president.

More than a million campaign ads were commissioned, almost half of them negative. The most popular subject in Republican ads was Obamacare. Pigs, guns and beer were also featured.

The result -- a very costly election.

In fact, the midterm election was the most expensive in history, with an estimated near-4 billion spent overall.  In Kentucky, which is an impoverished and (in terms of population) minor state, Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell, suffering low approval ratings and tough competition from gun-friendly Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, spent some 55 million on securing his re-election.

Political historian Allan Lichtman told reporters in Washington on Tuesday that the election did not merit its cost.

“For all of that money, one searches in vain for the great ideas, the grand principles, the inspiring ideological clashes between the two parties,” he said. “Where were the creative, bold and innovative solutions to the enormous problems facing the environment and the world?”

Lichtman complained that almost four billion dollars was wasted on “bland puff pieces” and “vicious, negative attacks,” and may as well have been burnt, “or better yet, given to some good, charitable causes,” such as doctors and aid workers fighting Ebola -- one of the concerns that voters brought to the ballot box, in vain.

Meanwhile in Washington, the Republican’s new-found majority in both houses of Congress will be stifled by President Obama’s executive powers. Most analysts believe that the shift in power will result in a continuation of gridlock, making the midterms seem very expendable indeed.