imho the power of the "popular" vote in this Presidential election is currently way over-rated. The Electoral vote count is what determines who becomes President.
Right now, many of the swing states (and most of the are way smaller in total voters) looks to be the deciding Electoral College factor.
Even if the vote count in California is 51% Obama, and obviously 49% Romney, ALL of California's 55 electoral votes go to the Obama side.
Here's a non-partisan (I think) to a map with much of the voting almost already predetermined based on current major polls:
http://www.270towin.com/
Of course, still way many factors yet to be determined in the final voting, and, yes, conceivably many of the congressional districts in California may end up voting GOP (don't bet your lunch on this) which means some of those districts may end up changing the sides in Congress a bit.
Reality - looks like the Florida (29) and N. Carolina (15), Virginia (13) among the southern states and on the northern side Pennsylvania (20), Ohio (18) and Michigan (16) and some scattered other states likely will determine the outcome. Only a couple of states (Maine & Nebraska, I think) allow split Electoral voting.
In the end, of course, even a modest one or two votes might make the final result so both candidates are trolling the so called "battleground" states where there is as yet no apparent winner.
Should we elect a president by popular vote as happens in other countries is not a question we can easily debate, as voters have no choice in this Constitutional matter. Only the several states can demand a Constitutional Congress (or Congress can) to amend the Constitution and I seriously doubt many state legislators (or Members of Congress) have the guts or the spine to even consider such an issue.
My take - imperfect as it may be, 230+ years of our history and experience have yielded very few Amendments and virtually none of those was truly easy. So we will continue to have (and suffer?) many many more decades of Presidential elections.