Seems unlikely Republicans will win popular vote in 2016

[Non Swing Voter]

Even though the election is 2 years out, one can just look at the map and some pretty stable voting patterns to see that Republicans start out at a huge disadvantage.

Barring some huge event, Democrats will more than likely net 3 million or so votes in California and 2 million or so votes in New York.  Probably an additional 1 million votes in New England and half a million in Illinois.

At best Republicans could net about 1.5 million votes in Texas.  States like Utah, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama could net Republicans another 3-4 million votes (which is being very generous)...

So if you add up these strongly D states and strongly R states, Democrats are at a 1-2 million vote advantage...

I can also think of a lot of other places where Democrats can net votes, such as the mid atlantic (New Jersey, Maryland, DC, Delaware) and the pacific northwest (WA, OR).

Most of the other states are going to be competitive (VA, NC, FL, GA, AZ, CO, NV, NM, WI, PA, MN, IA) and will probably end up in a popular vote draw.

So where do Republicans overcome this deficit?

It seems clear to me that it's becoming harder and harder for Republicans to win the popular vote.  It's not that the electoral college favors democrats so much as the overall population favors them by 2 or 3 points and this gets reflected in the electoral college. 

If democrats win the popular vote in 2016 that will be 6 of the last 7 elections in which that was the case.