text: In Defense of the Electoral College: Five reasons to keep our despised method of choosing the President by Richard A. Posner, "A dispute over the outcome of an Electoral College vote is possible--it happened in 2000--but it's less likely than a dispute over the popular vote." A clear winner will always be produced with the slight innormality of a tie. In 2012's election, Barack Obama received 51.3% of the popular vote compared to the 61.7% of the electoral vote. If the election process was by popular vote, it would have been a much closer race between Obama and Romney.