By: Brian Montopoli, CBS Political News President Obama won the
popular presidential vote in November by slightly less than five
million votes: The president received about 65.9 million votes
to Mitt Romney's 60.9 million. Of course, it's not the popular
vote that matters, as 2000 popular vote winner Al Gore could
tell you. It's electoral votes that decide who becomes
president. Mr. Obama's electoral vote victory was actually
significantly larger than his 3.9 percentage point popular vote
advantage: He took 332 electoral votes to 206 for Romney. Why
the disparity? In part because of the way electoral votes are
allocated. Most states allocate their electoral votes based on
who wins the popular vote: Even though Mr. Obama only won
Florida narrowly in November, for instance, he got all 29 of its
electoral votes. There are two states that do things
differently. In Nebraska and Maine, electoral votes are
allocated based on who wins each congressional district. That
means that the winner of the statewide popular vo