[Kid A]

Originally Posted by Blart

I hope Romney wins popular vote, so reforming the EC becomes a bi-partisan issue.

I want to see a National Popular Vote initiative gain some traction too (though I'd still prefer O win the popular vote this election). Heard some guy pushing to just amend it so PV winner gets another 30 EC votes, which is an interesting compromise.

It seems likely, though, even if the EC is decided before midnight tomorrow, we won't know popular vote winner for a few days:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/...vote-nightmare

This isn’t just a far-fetched scenario. If Obama ultimately wins the popular vote by a narrow margin, as suggested by the current average of national polls, Obama won’t lead the popular vote on Election Night and might not for weeks.

With the West Coast providing the margin of victory for any Democratic candidate in a close election, Republican presidential candidates outperform their eventual share of the popular vote until the West Coast reports its results. In 2008, California, Washington, and Oregon voted for Obama by a 4 million-vote margin, representing nearly half of his national popular vote victory.

But the time zones are not alone in delaying results from Washington, Oregon, and California. In most eastern states, the overwhelming majority of votes are counted by the end of Election Night, since only a small share of absentee or overseas ballots arrive after the election. But elections in Washington and Oregon are now conducted entirely by mail and 41 percent of California voters voted by mail in 2008. In some states, ballots only need to be postmarked by Election Day and it can take days before all of the votes arrive and weeks before they get counted, usually in modest batches once or twice a day.

Just for good measure, several big, blue cities in the East and Midwest don't always count 100 percent of their ballots on Election Night. Democrats also appear to gain from the provisional ballots counted across the rest of the country in the days following the election. Although the amount that Democrats gain from these ballots compared to the West Coast is unclear, the 2008 returns suggest that millions of votes were counted after Election Night throughout the eastern half of the country.

As a result, initial returns and derived estimates can significantly underestimate the final Democratic share of the popular vote. Even though Obama ultimately won 53.6 percent of the two party vote in 2008, Obama and McCain were still deadlocked at 50 percent when the networks projected Ohio for Obama.

If Obama performs as strongly in California, Washington, and Oregon as he did in 2008, he could trail by several percentage points in the national popular vote while giving his victory or concession speech and ultimately seize the lead in the popular vote in the following days and weeks. Even a more middling performance out West, closer to Kerry's, would still allow him to make considerable gains. Unless Election Night ends with Obama holding a lead in the popular vote or Romney holding a large enough advantage to withstand the possibility of a predictably strong showing in late ballots, we may not know the winner of the popular vote for weeks.