Despite carrying Louisiana in both popular and electoral votes, Republican Sen. John McCain lost the presidency to Democratic Sen. Barack Obama on Election Day.Shortly after midnight in the East, The Associated Press count showed Obama with 338 electoral votes, well more than the 270 needed for victory. McCain had 141 after winning states comprising the normal Republican base.The popular vote was close — 51.3 percent for Obama to 47.5 percent for McCain, with 73 percent of all U.S. precincts counted as of press time.The 72-year-old McCain, a POW during the Vietnam War, was attempting his second try for the White House, following his defeat in the battle for the GOP nomination in 2000.”I don’t know what more we could have done to win this election,” McCain told supporters in Arizona. “I’ll leave that to others to determine … I won’t spend a moment in the future regretting what might have been.”In his victory speech in Chicago, Obama said America faces many challenges ahead.”So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder,” Obama said in his victory speech.Though McCain’s lost, Louisiana’s Republican Party hosted an election night watch party at the Holiday Inn Select on Constitution Avenue, celebrating Republican Bill Cassidy’s congressional victory over incumbent Democrat Don Cazayoux. State Treasurer John Kennedy, who lost the Senate race to incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu, spoke at the event. “I ran as hard as I could,” Kennedy said to a crowd of about 100 supporters and volunteers. He thanked Gov. Bobby Jindal, his cabinet and his campaign team for their support. Kennedy said he called Landrieu to congratulate her.”I extended to her my commitment to work with her every single day to make Louisiana as good as it can be,” Kennedy said. Many University students attended the event and said they had strong feelings about the election results. “We did it to ourselves,” said Chuck Fontenot, president of the College Republicans. “For a party that claims we are fiscally conservative and small government, in the last eight years the fact of the matter is we’ve expanded the government to great lengths and we’ve run a budget deficit. We’ve kind of lost the trust of the American people.”Fontenot said Republicans will make a strong comeback.”I just look forward to 2012,” Fontenot said. “Hopefully the Republican party can kind of regroup, step back and take a look at what we’ve done wrong — some of the few things we’ve done right — and just sort of evaluate where we need to go in the future.”Stephen Martinez, economics senior, said he is hopeful about the future despite Obama’s viewpoints.”I think great change is coming,” Martinez said. “It might be a little drastic, but hopefully it will fair out in the end.”—-Contact Kyle Bove at [email protected]