The latest Electoral College Map indicates a tight contest going into the last week and a half before the Presidential Election 2012, with many presidential polls suggesting that Mitt Romney is leading nationally, but with many polls across the key swing states showing Obama has the slim advantage.

Increasingly pundits are contemplating a scenario whereby Republican candidate Romney carries the popular vote, but that Obama will return to the White House by winning the Electoral College Vote, claiming the 270 electoral votes needed to claim a second term.

Mark McKinnon, a political strategist for former president George W. Bush, has told The Washington Post: “I think it’s a 50/50 possibility — or more.”

William A. Glaston, who also served as a policy adviser to former president Bill Clinton, also told the publication, “If the election were held tomorrow, it wouldn’t just be a possibility, it would be actual.”

The split between the Electoral College Vote and the Popular Vote has only happened four times in American history. But if it happens again this year that the person who received the most votes fails to make it into the White House, it would be the second time in the past 12 years it had happened.

However, interestingly if the split did happen this time it would be the first time ever that an incumbent president would be returned to the White House despite the majority of Americans voting to replace him.

In the 2000 election, former President Bush was never able to shake off the accusations from Democrats that he had not really won the election. That year the then-Vice President Al Gore had won the popular vote by 500,000 votes, yet Bush entered the White House for the first time.

This has been one of the most polarizing presidential campaigns in U.S. history, and if a split between the Electoral College Vote and the Popular Vote does happen, the next four years could be just as polarizing, as the president would look to fight a broken economy and navigate a potentially explosive foreign policy against what would be a strong headwind of opposition and dissension.