text: Fortuatntly though one thing that a Electoral College can promise you is a certainty of outcome. A dispute over the outcome of an Electoral College vote is possible. It happened in 2000 but it is less likely than a dispute over the poppular vote . For exmaple in 2012's election with Obama and Romney , Obama recieved 61.7 percent of the electoral vote compared to only 51.3 percent of the popular votes cast for him and Romney. Because almost all states award electoral votes on a winner -take-all basis , even a very slight plurality in a state creates a big elecoral - vote victory .