President Barack Obama gained the necessary amount of Electoral College votes needed for his re-election back into the White House shortly after midnight, however, many people are still curious on how the popular votes will end up, what the popular votes mean and how if can affect the projected election results.

Presidential elections are decided by the Electoral College vote, not by the popular vote.

Though the results of the popular vote are still unofficial and might take some time, whatever the outcome is will not change the fact that Obama has been re-elected.

The latest results of the popular votes indicate that Obama leads Romney with 58,720,700 to 56,145,950. This means that Obama leads Romney with 50.1 percent to his 48.4 percent. For most of the night, Romney led with the popular vote, but that was just before the western United States closed their polls and counted the ballots.

California and other western states have boosted Obama's numbers significantly, according to The Huffington Post. Nate Silver, a writer for The New York Times, said Wednesday morning that Obama is "likely" to win the popular vote.

He wrote that Obama will win the popular vote "perhaps by two to three percent points, once votes from California, Oregon and Washington are fully counted."

In 2008, Obama and Joe Biden went ahead and topped John McCain and Sarah Palin by 69 percent to 59 percent. In 2000, Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman won the popular vote over George Bush and Dick Cheney to 50.9 million to 50.4 million. They, however, lost the election due to the Electoral College vote.