text: In 2012, Obama received 61.7% of electoral votes but only 51.3% of popular. Either way he would have won, but the popular vote is more of what the actual citezens want. in 2000, Al Gore dominated the individual popular vote, but when the electoral votes were counted, Gore came up short with 266, wheras Bush had 271. So you can see that if the popular vote was what counted (as it should be), Gore would have won the election.