The University of Edinburgh was swept up in the excitement surrounding last week’s US presidential election, with a huge number of students attending university-organised events to witness Barack Obama’s overwhelming victory over John McCain.

Teviot House was at the centre of the celebrations, with door staff giving estimates of 800 students in attendance, while hundreds more queued across Bristo Square. Similar scenes were found at nearby Native State, where the university’s Politics Society also managed to exceed capacity with their election night party.

In addition to the evening’s celebrations, the University’s International Office hosted an event as part of the Global Horizons festival, in which students were encouraged to vote on which of the two presidential candidates they preferred.

In an effort to preserve neutrality, statements on a range of key policies were read out with participants being given no clue as to which candidate had made the statement.

Nonetheless, the vast majority of those in attendance were overwhelmingly in favour of Barack Obama’s policies. When asked which candidate they would vote for outright, less than 4 per cent of the audience chose McCain.

Quotations such as defeated Republican John McCain’s “Drill, baby, drill!” – a response to the environmental question of drilling for oil in Alaska – found little favour with the audience, with 89 of the 102 participants voting against the statement.

The event, which took place in David Hume Tower, covered topics including the US’s role in global climate change, tax cuts and dealings with Pakistan. Opinions were gauged using an interactive voting system with hand-held electronic ‘clickers’.

Significantly, 81 per cent preferred Obama’s promise to withdraw troops from Iraq, with only 19 participants siding with McCain’s proposition to prolong the war on terror.

The sole exception that divided the audience was the candidates’ attitudes towards the US mortgage crisis, with 47 audience members favouring McCain’s statement.

It is thought that McCain’s policies on this issue provided a significant boost to the Republican campaign, with US poll figures showing a surge in support at the time of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Throughout the course of the 90 minute event - which included a post-vote question and answer session - it quickly became evident that, regardless of the anonymity of policy statements, the Global Horizons organisers were heavily biased in favour of Obama.

Additionally, many of those present admitted to having voted for the statements they suspected had been made by the victorious Democrat.