It’s 2:17 AM on Wednesday, November 7th and President Obama has won reelection with 294 electoral votes. Colorado is still too close to call. But the network anchors aren’t mulling the course of Obama’s second term because they can’t help but notice the national popular vote. Romney's ahead…by a lot.

It was easy to dismiss Romney’s lead in the popular vote when the West Coast states were still outstanding, even if his four-point lead seemed formidable. But most precincts in California are now reporting and the president is still underwater by more than one million votes. Analysts extrapolating the final results based on initial returns and the percentage of outstanding precincts calculate that Obama is unlikely to take the lead, igniting a firestorm undermining the legitimacy of an embattled president. And yet weeks later, President Obama takes the popular vote lead, and never relinquishes it.

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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.