Romney could have won the popular vote and lst the Presidency

[zorkpolitics]

Obama currently leads the popular vote by 2.4%, to win the popular vote Romney needed a shift of 3%.  However, a 3% shift would have only swung FL, OH and VA to Romney but he still would have been 4 EV short of winning the Presidency. So it was indeed possible Romney could have won the popular vote and lost the Presidency.

To win the extra Electoral Votes Romney would have needed one more state. The next closest state was CO and that would have required a popular vote shift of 5% for Romney to win.
So Romney could have won the popular vote by 2.5% and still lost the Presidency

There are of course two ways Romney could have won, either by convincing 2.5% of the voters to switch or encourage Sean Trende “missing” 8 million GOP voters to show up.